


Hell Bent

by suchadearie



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-30 08:24:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 33,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suchadearie/pseuds/suchadearie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Belle is asked by her twin Lacey if she will take her place for a few weeks, Belle has no idea what she's getting into: Lacey is married to wealthy Mr. Gold, but their marriage turned sour. To escape her problems, Lacey seeks out the help of her twin, whom she hasn't talked to in years. Belle, not even knowing that her sister is now married and stepmom to a seven year old son - Bae - soon learns that in this family, nothing is easy. And nothing is as it appears to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Lacey stared at the phone on the bed before her as if she expected it to come alive and bite her. She knew, deep down and without a doubt, that the number hadn’t changed. No, no matter how far apart or how long they hadn’t talked to each other, there were things Lacey just knew about her sister. For instance, Isobel - Belle - wouldn’t change her number without sending her at least a text to let her know. Because sweet little Belle was afraid that Lacey couldn’t reach her if she needed her. So, even after seven years, there was not a single doubt that Lacey, should she choose to take the phone and dial Belle’s number, would indeed reach her sister. All she had to do was take the phone. And just as little as she doubted that she’d reach her sister did she doubt that Belle would jump to her rescue, just as she had always done. Daddy’s perfect little girl, always ready to help her evil twin out of trouble. Lacey had never been the good girl. She took another sip of the wine on her nightstand.

Just when she picked up the phone, to make her call and change her life, a timid knock on the door ripped her out of her determination.

“Mama? Papa says you have to come down.”

God, how she hated it. The boy always called her Mama. He made him call her Mama. She was nobody’s mom, and she didn’t intend on ever being anybody’s mom.

“Tell him not now. I’m busy.” She stared at the phone. No use making that phone call now. She knew exactly what would happen next. The boy would go down to his father and tell him that she refused to come down. Then he would limp up the stairs, old cripple that he was, knock on her door and tell her to come down. Not that they needed her. The housekeeper never missed a single speck of dust and dinner was always ready on time. But he wanted her to sit at the table with them – to play family for his brat, to keep up appearances. She took another swig of her wine. Yep, she could already hear him coming up the stairs, thudding his cane with more force than necessary on the floorboards. He wanted her to hear him coming.

Lacey closed her eyes and counted backwards from ten. Just when she reached one, he knocked at her door, with the handle of his cane, and swung it open. She greeted him with her wineglass and a smirk.

“Cheers, Reuben.” She downed the rest of her wine.

“Lacey, please come down. It’s time for dinner.”

Oh, he sounded so polite. He would never lose his countenance. Not with her. At least not as long as his precious little boy was around. She slid off the bed and stalked to the door, noting that he stepped a little back. Oh yes, he was so fucking afraid of her. He was like one of those dogs. Scare them, corner them, drive them wild, and at some point, they’d snap and bite back. She knew all the tricks by now. She grabbed the door handle, staring straight into his eyes, and steadied herself.

“I told Bae that I’m busy and don’t have time, and I tell you the same. Not now, I’m busy.” She spat out every word, clipped and sharp, and started to close the door into his face. But today, he didn’t back down. Instead, he placed his cane between door and doorframe and kept her from shutting him out.

“Busy with what? Drinking yourself into oblivion?” He sounded just as sharp as she had.

“Exactly.”

“Dinner is always at seven. Couldn’t you even wait half an hour to get drunk?”

“Then I would have started at four thirty.”

His face contorted in disgust, and Lacey wondered what she ever found attractive about him. His gaze flitted past her and found the half-empty bottle of wine on her nightstand.

“How many did you have before that? Two?”

It was her first in days, but she didn’t correct him. “Possible”, she said, and slurred her speech a little more than it really was. She was still almost sober. Too sober for this confrontation, actually.

“Do it at least for the boy, if you can’t do it for me. He needs a family.” There it was, the whiny tone she hated so much. She wanted a man, not a baby, and god, how his face sickened her with those lines etched into it. He always begged, never took. So pathetic.

“The boy has a family. It doesn’t make a difference if we sit down to play happy over dinner.”

At that, he narrowed his eyes, and the softness vanished. It was an echo of his business face, the one she liked better, the one that had made her think she was in love with him. If she had only known, then, what a paper-thin façade this was.

“You will come down and eat with us, or I will cut your allowance by half.” His voice was cold enough to cut glass, and a muscle twitched above his jaw. He knew exactly that this would make her bend to his will, just as well as she knew how to get under his skin and draw out the ice-cold bastard hiding there. She licked her lips, and noted how his eyes followed her tongue. Well, at least that he would never do without her permission, no matter how much she provoked him.

“Give me ten minutes. I think I need to vomit first.”

This time, when she wanted to close the door, he didn’t hinder her. She leaned her head against the door and heard him limping away. How was it possible that something that started out like a beautiful romance turned into so much hatred in such short a time? They were married for merely three years now. They didn’t even sleep in the same room anymore.

Instead of going to the bathroom, she scrambled back onto the bed and grabbed the phone. It was time to make her call.

Belle picked up after the second ring, and she almost screamed into the phone. Lacey had to hold it a little away from her head, or she would be deaf by the time her sister was finished screeching.

“Lacey, how are you? I missed you! Are you in trouble? You are in trouble, right? I can feel it, you are in trouble!”

Lacey had to cut her off, because Belle had maneuvered herself into a circle, and she wouldn’t get out of it by herself.

“Belle, sweetie, get out of it and let me talk.” There was no need for awkward explanations why she hadn’t called in seven years. Or why she never wrote or not even texted, not even on Christmas, or their birthday. That was the upside of being a twin. They never really were disconnected. “You’re right, I’m in trouble, and I need your help.”

Belle was silent for a moment. Lacey heard how her sister inhaled deeply, and she smiled, because she knew exactly how Belle closed her eyes and braced herself to agree to whatever needed to be done to get Lacey out of trouble. “Tell me”, Belle said then, and Lacey sighed. No going back now, because once Belle decided on rescuing her, there was nothing that could keep her from doing exactly that.


	2. Through the Door

Belle went through her list for the seventy-fourth time. She had all the pictures Lacey had sent her. She had the plans of the house and all the directions Lacey had given her to navigate the town (“It’s noplaceville, there isn’t really a chance for you to get lost”, Lacey had said, but Belle wanted to be on the safe side). She knew which were Lacey’s favorite clothes, and which shower gel she used (Belle had purchased one, although it ripped a giant hole in her monthly budget for frippery, and found out that she didn’t like it), and which was her favorite shade of nail polish. She knew her sister’s daily routine by heart. Not that there was much of a routine. Apparently being rich suited Lacey’s extensive need for leisure. That was until it got dark and Lacey awoke. Not everything had changed in the past seven years.

Belle pulled onto the parking lot of a small diner in the middle of the woods, a few miles before Storybrooke, and leaned forward to peer out of the windshield of her old Chevrolet. The neon sign over the diner said “Biker’s Paradise”, and there were a few motorcycles scattered in front of it. Belle only hoped that Lacey hadn’t come with a motorcycle, because Belle had no idea how to drive one. There were a few cars, too, and against one of them (God, one of those shiny, giant SUVs…she would never be able to drive that either) leant Lacey. Belle had hardly time to park the car before Lacey was at the driver side door and pulled her out, nearly choking her in a fierce hug.

“I’m so glad you came! You really came!”

Belle patted Lacey’s hair, a little awkwardly, and sniveled with the tears biting her eyes. She had missed her sister. She always did. But she knew that Lacey needed space, and freedom, so she accepted it when Lacey cut herself off from friends and family.

Lacey pulled back and wiped the tears from her own face. “Let’s go inside”, she said, sniffing, and Belle nodded. 

“So, what happened?” Belle asked, once they were seated and had a tea in front of them. Lacey had ordered Bourbon, but Belle had changed that back to tea. “You’re going to drive my car. No alcohol. This car is all I have, and I don’t want to peel it from a tree.”

“Always so much fun”, Lacey had sneered, but she gave in. She always did. Belle knew exactly that her sister needed boundaries just as much as she needed space. Lacey needed her, but hell would freeze over before she ever admitted that.

“I need time. I just…I’m going crazy.” Lacey stared down into her tea, and Belle tilted her head and smiled. It was a sad smile.

“You told me all that. And I’m here. But I wanted to know what happened.” She had already agreed to take Lacey’s place for a few weeks. She had taken off six weeks from work. Not that it made that much of a difference, since her father didn’t pay her. All the money she made went back into the flower shop. “Maybe start with how it comes you’re married and I didn’t even get a postcard?”

Lacey shrugged, and her face had that stubborn expression she always wore when she didn’t want to admit that she had been wrong about something. “We thought we were in love. And then I got pregnant, and before I even knew what happened, I was married to the richest man in town and stepmom to a little boy.”

There was so much pain in what she didn’t say, that Belle’s insides twisted into knots. She had known that something was terribly wrong, two and a half years ago. It had taken her weeks to realize that the black despair she felt wasn’t her own.

“What happened?” she asked again, hoarse and barely a whisper. She didn’t want to force her sister to look back at that pain. If Belle had felt so terrible, so hopeless, so trapped in a cave of black and white-hot pain, how must Lacey have felt?

“I lost it. It was too soon. It didn’t make it.”

Belle bit the insides of her cheeks to keep herself from flinching. Lacey called her baby “it”. But it must have been old enough to be a girl or a boy. Lacey couldn’t even look that closely at her pain.

“Oh sweetie…why didn’t you call me?”

“And what would you’ve done? Pitied me? Believe me, I got enough pity. Reuben couldn’t even look at me for months. He blamed me.”

“He didn’t.” Belle couldn’t believe that anyone would be that cruel.

“Not with words, no. But his face told me everything I needed to know. He isn’t a very good liar, you know. And he never touched me after that. So, don’t worry, sex isn’t part of your job of being me.” Lacey laughed, hollow and too loud, and it felt like a stab to Belle’s heart.

“Ok…”

“And even if you two would fall into one bed, out of some accident or whatever, you don’t need to worry. He doesn’t do it with the lights on. He would never notice that you’re not me.”

“Lacey!” That was decidedly more information than Belle cared to know. Lacey snickered.

“Still the same sissy, huh?”

“So last week, when you called me…”

“It was her death-day, yes. He didn’t even remember it.” Lacey took a sip of her tea and creased her nose, as if she wished it was something stronger.

“So it was a girl.” Belle reached out and squeezed Lacey’s hand. Her sister looked down at their clasped hands, and chewed her lips.

“Isobel”, she croaked. Belle needed a moment to realize that Lacey had named her dead child after her, after her sister. It broke her heart all over again. Lacey cleared her throat. “Look, I just need some time off. I thought I would get better, but I just can’t stand it anymore. I need to breathe. I need sun, and warmth. I need to get out of this hellhole.”

“Why don’t you just talk to Reuben?” The name felt like a pebble on her tongue and rolled a little clumsy from her lips. Lacey shook her head.

“I tried. He doesn’t listen to me. He doesn’t want to leave his business. And he doesn’t want me to leave his son. We play happy for his precious little boy.”

“This is the saddest thing I ever heard.”

“Tell me about it.” Lacey shrugged again, as if it didn’t matter. “So, are you up for it?”

Belle looked at their hands, still clasped. She had doubts that Lacey’s plan was really the best course of action, but she supposed that it couldn’t hurt if she had time to think about her situation and maybe come to a conclusion of what to do with her life. Generally she’d say Lacey should talk it out with her husband, but she knew Lacey. Lacey needed time alone to make up her mind. And Belle loved her too much to put her through anymore pain. Besides, Lacey had promised to take care of their dad’s debts. So, if Belle could quit at the flower shop when she was through with this and do something that she wanted to do for a change…That wouldn’t be so bad.

“I’ll do it. Six weeks.” She could see how the tension left Lacey, how her sister’s eyes filled with tears, and she was sure that she just saved Lacey’s life. Lacey had never been the strong one, and Belle always feared that someday, something would break her sister beyond repair.

They swapped their clothes and their phones, and Lacey gave her a quick lesson in programming the navigation device of her SUV. With the help of that magical little thing, she even found the way to Lacey’s home without problems. “Remember, I always park in the back of the house”, Lacey had said, and Belle steered the giant car in walking speed over the driveway to the back of the pink house where Lacey lived. Although she knew everything from the pictures, the reality still stumped her.

Her first moment of panic came when she didn’t remember the right key on Lacey’s key ring. She tried two different keys at the back door, and when the third didn’t work, she had to bite back tears of fear. Then the door swung open, and she was faced by a plump woman in a blue dress. Helen, her mind supplied. The housekeeper.

“Mrs. Gold”, the woman said, her eyebrows nearly vanishing under her hairline.

“There seems to be a problem with my key…” Belle stammered, and the woman creased her forehead. Belle held her breath, convinced that her deception failed before she even started. Lacey had done her hair and her makeup, and from afar, they were similar enough. And Belle knew how to act as Lacey. It was not the first time they did this. Of course, the other times had been harmless pranks in school, or a tactic to get rid of a boyfriend that had evolved to a pain in the ass. They both preferred to let their sister do the breaking up. It was easier when your emotions weren’t entangled in the whole thing, and yes, it was a little fun, too. This was different, though. This time, she needed to be one hundred percent convincing as Lacey.

The housekeeper stepped aside and let her in. “Yeah, the door still jams from time to time. I let Marco have another look at it.”

Belle tried to look around without attracting attention. She knew everything from the pictures, but still, it looked so much bigger in reality.

“Mr. Gold and Bae are waiting for you with the dinner.”

Belle winced. Lacey had told her that would happen. She had also supplied her with an excuse. But before she could find her way into the dining room, she had to get rid of her jacket, and her purse. She had no idea where Lacey used to place her belongings when she came home.

“I’m coming in a second. I just need to slip into more comfortable shoes…” Belle ignored the frown that the housekeeper gave her and hurried through the door of the kitchen into the hallway. She had to stop shortly to orient herself, and after finding the stairs and going upstairs, she had to count the doors on the right to find Lacey’s room. She nearly collapsed when she closed the door behind her, trembling and light-headed.

The first thing she did was slipping out of Lacey’s murderous high heels. Then she looked around. The room was …blank. There was almost nothing that suggested that Lacey even lived here. No pictures. No chaos. No scattered clothes, no empty dishes. Belle knew that Lacey loved to eat in her bed. There weren’t even crumbs. Nothing hinted at Lacey’s personality, and for a moment Belle feared she was in the wrong room. Then she remembered that Lacey had placed a letter for her under the pillow, and she rushed to the bed and felt after the letter. There it was. She was in the right room. But before she could open the letter, there was a knock at the door, and it swung open.

“Lacey, we’re waiting.”

Belle stared at the man in the door, wearing a perfectly tailored suit and leaning on a cane. Reuben. Lacey’s husband. His face was motionless.

“I…I’m coming”, she choked out, and he frowned. Only then did she remember that she had to be Lacey, and with all the calmness she could muster, she straightened. “Give me a minute”, she said, and the frown vanished from his face to be replaced by coldness.

“You’re already ten minutes late. Time’s up.” He stepped aside and gestured for her to get out of the room, and Belle wondered, with a brief flicker of nausea, exactly what kind of chilling relationship her sister had with her husband. And what exactly she had agreed to do.


	3. At the Table

For one short moment, after pushing open the door, he didn’t recognize her. Which was ridiculous. She looked at him as if she saw him for the first time. But it lasted only for a few seconds, then Lacey was back. Or gone again, depending on the perspective. When she walked past him, her scent wafted over him, and he expected to feel his usual reaction to her closeness, bile rising in his throat and his insides clenching into roiling knots, but it didn’t come. Their eyes met, and there it was, the resentment that always lingered at the back of his mind.

“Walk”, he bit out, and she winced, barely visible, as if she hadn’t expected it. That set him even more on edge. It went on for too long now, and god, he was sick of it. She walked as if she wasn’t sure where to go, and he was close to losing his patience. When they reached the foot of the stairs, he passed her and walked ahead, not able to bear it any longer. Bae sat at the table and waited for them, like always, his eyes huge in his small face. So lost. It was this that angered him the most.

He pulled out her chair for her, and Lacey sat down, tense and slowly, and he wondered if she had a guilty conscience. Would be the first time. But she didn’t slump down on her chair like usually, didn’t sprawl on her seat like she usually did to annoy him. She thought she was so subtle, but he knew all her tricks to drive him crazy, and although it felt like having his teeth pulled, he mostly managed to ignore her attempts at getting under his skin. Today, she was as tense as a scared animal, and he stared down at her neck and her shoulders, left bare from the brambles she called a hairdo, forgetting for a moment to let go of her chair and step away. He longed to ask her what made her act this guilty, but as long as the boy was there, he would do nothing of the sort.

For a moment, not longer than it took him to blink it away, he remembered the time when everything had been different. When pulling out her chair for her had been a gesture of respect, of love. Not one of control. And his fingertips tingled with the memory of her skin. The moment was gone when he sat down himself, and she looked at him as if she remembered something similar to his own thoughts. Only to remember her hatred of him and find back to her usual self, her posture crumbling as she rested her elbows on the table and pulled up one of her feet to sit on it. He didn’t say anything.

His son stared at her, too, he noticed, and his heart ached for his boy. He just wanted to belong, and didn’t know that he had lost the fight for her love long ago. They all had. He was not sure if Lacey was even capable of love anymore.

“Hello, Mama”, Bae said, more like he was on stage as if he actually was happy to see his stepmom. His heart had been broken too often to greet her with sincerity.

“Hi Bae. How was your day?”

The fork, halfway on its way to his lips, slipped out of Gold’s grip, and he was not sure what had just happened. Bae stared at her as if she was an alien impersonator, and for all Gold knew, she very well could be. The clatter of his cutlery hitting his plate made her flinch, and she frowned at him.

“Are you alright?”

“Perfect.” It was a growl, actually, and he longed even more now for this dinner to end, so he could interrogate her and find out what she had been up to today. But first, they had to sit through this dinner, and he wasn’t one to rush things. He used the time to watch her, with narrowed eyes, wondering what it was she was scheming, wondering what made her act interested in his son all of a sudden. Bae didn’t trust it either, and although only seven, his son had already been burnt too often to fall for her tricks…whatever they were today. Her attempts at making conversation came to nothing. Bae answered with single words, staring down at his plate, and Lacey gave up on her game after a while. And although Gold longed for this dinner to be over, much like every dinner, its end came still too soon.

“You can go upstairs and watch your cartoons for half an hour now, Bae”, he said, and his son slipped away, glad to escape the dinner table. Lacey placed her napkin on the table and wanted to get up, too, wanted to sneak away just like every night.

“You stay”, he said, and the coldness of his own voice didn’t shock him anymore. “I want to talk to you.”

She stared at him as if she expected him to leap at her and push her down again, maybe stab her hands with knives to pin them to the table. He raised a brow, and she sank slowly back onto her seat. He expected her to shoot some nasty comment at him, tell him to fuck off and leave her alone, but she just looked at him, waiting.

“Where have you been?” he asked, and she narrowed her eyes, looked at him as if she was trying to detect a hidden meaning behind his words.

“I had an appointment with Doctor Hopper today.”

She was good at lying, and he would have believed her, maybe, if this lie hadn’t been so sloppy. He wondered if she had been drinking again. Normally, her lies were a lot better.

“See, dearie, that’s a lie.” He paused, watching her and giving her time to realize that he’d caught her. Her eyes widened, and he saw something almost like panic flutter over her face. But Lacey didn’t panic that easily, and she reigned in her face and smiled. Or maybe she snarled, he wasn’t really sure about that, never was with her.

“No, it isn’t.”

Gold rumpled the napkin in his hand, pressing it tightly to get rid of the sticky feeling forming on his palms. Although there was sweat forming on his skin, he was shivering with the cold inside him. She should have reconsidered that lie.

“Well, then why did Dr. Hopper call me earlier today and tell me that you canceled all your appointments for the next six weeks?”

She paled, and her eyes widened again, as if she couldn’t believe someone would betray her like that. Not that Hopper had much of a choice, spineless cockroach that he was.

“Isn’t that kind of…private? Doctor-Patient confidentiality?”

“Don’t tell me you’re surprised, dearie. So, where have you really been?”

She stared at him, licked her lips. Then she rose again, putting her hands to the tabletop and bending slightly forward. That was more like her, throwing a tantrum. He braced himself for her poisonous words, but she didn’t start yelling at him. Instead, she stared right into his eyes, and for the length of a heartbeat, he was shocked. He couldn’t remember the last time she had looked at him like that. Looked into his eyes and met his gaze.

“I’m not going to answer you, Reuben. Now, excuse me, I’d like to rest.” She turned away and started for the door. He still didn’t know why she looked so guilty, but he saw that it was unlikely he’d find out the reason for her strange behavior right away. Lucky for him, he was patient. And Lacey was many things, but she was neither patient nor clever.

“One thing, dearie.”

She froze and turned around, slowly and eying him with suspicion.

“Hand me the pinot noir, please?” He pointed his chin to the wine rack, and she followed his motion with her gaze, as if she had no idea what he was talking about. And he expected her to tell him to fetch his damn wine himself (only less nicely), but, to his surprise, she fetched him a bottle of pinot noir and came back to him, taking care not to step too close, and placed it on the table in front of him. Just when she wanted to retreat again, he grasped her hand. She flinched, and he couldn’t blame her. They hardly ever touched anymore. The contact with her skin shocked him for a short moment, rendered him speechless, and he felt heat spread from where they touched. He tried to keep his grip gentle, didn’t hold her too tight, so she could pull away, if she wanted to. But she didn’t. That shocked him almost as much as the contact of their skin itself. She even let him pull her a little closer.

“Please reconsider canceling your appointments, Lacey. Dr. Hopper was worried about you.” He looked at her hand, at her nails painted in that ugly shade of blue, and felt her tremble.

“Is this a suggestion? Or a threat?”

“A plea.”

She pulled her hand out of his grip and rubbed it absent-mindedly. He felt the urge to do the same, to get rid of the feeling of ants biting into his skin where they had touched.

“I will consider it.” This time, when she turned and stalked away, he didn’t hold her back. He stared at the wine in front of him and contemplated that strange feeling itching under his skin. The turmoil roiling in his stomach. She was so blind in her pain, so egoistical. At first he had been able to understand, had been able to accept, even when he hated her a little for being able to feel that pain so much sharper, for losing herself completely in it. He hated her even more now, after two years, because she still hadn’t given up on it. He had known exactly what he would find when he fetched her out of her room, on the day of their daughter’s death. He saw it, he understood it. But that didn’t keep him from hating it, and hating her for it. He had wanted that baby so much more than she ever had, yet she was the one living in a hell of pain and regret day in, day out, while he…well. It was not as if there was anything to be done about it.

He knew he should stop resenting her. But after she lost their daughter, she started to hate Bae for being alive. And that was something Gold could never forgive. He opened the bottle and raised his glass to himself, knowing that Lacey did exactly the same thing alone in her room upstairs. Once more, he wondered why he couldn’t let go.


	4. Plan of Site

It didn’t take long for Belle to find out that Lacey’s life was miserable. And she began to wonder if Lacey would ever come back. The house was filled with an eerie quiet, a solid silence that clung to her skin like sticky cotton wool, slowly suffocating her. As far as she could tell, there was only one TV, and it was in the Master Bedroom. In the evenings, after dinner, Bae was allowed to go there to watch his favorite cartoon for half an hour, often enough joined by his father. Belle knew better than to set a foot into Reuben’s bedroom.

Apart from that TV, there was nothing. No CD player, no record player, no radio. Lacey didn’t even have a laptop, and Belle began to wonder what her sister – who had been a TV addict and someone who couldn’t breathe without music – did all day long.

Whatever it was, it seemed to involve lots of sleep. Reuben got up early in the mornings and woke his son, made him breakfast, before they both left the house together. Belle knew that, because she didn’t sleep for one second the first night she spent in Lacey’s home, and she was still awake when Lacey’s husband and her stepson got up in the morning and left the house forty five minutes later. A little while after that, the housekeeper came and took care of…everything.

“You don’t have to lift a finger. Helen does all the cleaning and the cooking”, Lacey had told her. And when Bae came home from school, Helen took care of him, too. The only fixed point in Lacey’s days was dinner with Reuben and Bae in the evenings. But judging by that first dinner she sat through as Lacey, that wasn’t really a family dinner. She had noticed the way they reacted to her question – innocent enough – and she wondered if Lacey talked at all, with anyone. Finding out that she had cancelled her appointments with her therapist (and finding out that that so called Doctor didn’t know any better than to tell this to her husband) was only a shock because it told Belle that Lacey hadn’t planned this as well as she thought she had. Of course, her therapist was much more likely to find out that she wasn’t Lacey than anyone else in this strange household, given the fact that no one even talked to her sister, but still, cancelling her scheduled sessions six week in a row was sloppy.

When Reuben had confronted her about it, Belle had been sure that her deception was over and he was about to realize that he was not really talking to his wife. But although she was slightly off in her impersonation – because she had had no idea how much Lacey had changed, how unlike Lacey Lacey had become – her sister’s imprint was etched too deep into his vision for him to really see her. Apart from the suffocating quiet smothering the house and the family, that was the saddest thing about it all. They had stopped seeing each other.

Even when she had agreed to take Lacey’s place for six weeks, she had expected, somehow, that she would give her sister maybe not more than a day or two to bring some distance between herself and her problems, before she was found out. That was before she realized that no one would notice Lacey’s absence, because her sister had stopped existing a long time ago. Not only the room she lived in was bare of her personality. The house, the people…They lived their routine, and Lacey had no place in it. Belle started to feel sick within the first week, started to feel detached and isolated.

And angry.

She couldn’t remember a time when she ever had been this angry. This was not a family, not a home. It was a prison. Lacey needed boundaries, Belle knew that better than anyone, but more than boundaries, Lacey needed to feel loved. And one dinner with Lacey’s husband and his son was enough for Belle to realize that this family was steeped in hatred. And no matter how much he tried to make it look as if he was worried for Lacey, Belle couldn’t help but feel threatened by Reuben’s control mechanisms. The way he took her hand the first evening, the way he talked to her…it was all so cold. And Belle realized, no matter how detached Lacey was from this family, her husband always had a close eye on what she did. It appeared unhealthy, at best. Downright frightening at worst. But Belle trusted Lacey enough not to let her walk blindly into an environment of control and abuse. And she was free to leave the house, to go out and do whatever she wanted to do. No one asked her where she went, or what she did – as long as it was outside their home. But then again, maybe Reuben didn’t need to ask where she went when she left the house. Maybe he knew.

At home, however, Belle found out soon enough that Helen was as much a warden as she was a housekeeper. When she wanted to greet Bae on the first day, when he came home from school, the woman stepped into her way and told her to let the boy finish his homework in peace and quiet. When Belle pointed out that she maybe could help with the homework, Helen let her know that she was perfectly capable of doing that herself, had in fact done it long enough now, and if she should call Mr. Gold to ask him about it. Belle backed down, but there was a bitter taste at the back of her throat, and her insides didn’t unclench for the rest of the day. When she wanted to go to Lacey’s room, carrying a plate with a sandwich, because she hated the thought of eating anywhere near that dragon lady while the tears still pricked her eyes, Helen stepped in her way, again.

“Mrs. Gold, you know you’re not supposed to take that upstairs”, she said, with a voice as pleasant as it was condescending. Belle stared from Helen to her sandwich and was, for a moment, lost.

“Take what upstairs?” she asked, and Helen’s eyebrows once again crawled up to her hairline, and she cocked her head. Then, moving like a giant black spider, she took the plate out of Belle’s hand. 

Belle watched as Helen carried the plate into the dining room and placed it on the table, pulling out a chair and waiting for her to follow and sit down. Her eyes met Bae’s, who sat at the kitchen table, hunched over his homework, and watched the scene with a strange mix of curiosity and glee. As if he enjoyed to see her reprimanded. It was this look in his eyes that made her wonder what exactly Lacey’s part had been in building this ice palace. She looked away from the boy, whose intense gaze on her made her nervous and increased the feeling of uneasiness lingering at the back of her mind, and she followed Helen’s silent orders and sat down to eat in the dining room. She could hardly chew, hardly swallow, and she felt as if she was choking on something hairy and moving, not at all a sandwich.

Maybe Lacey didn’t need her to hold the line while she was away. Maybe Lacey needed her to break her out of prison.

She was almost surprised that Reuben didn’t say a thing about it in the evening, during dinner, because she had been sure that Helen told him everything that was going on. She came down on her own this time, and after her experience from the day before, she didn’t try to talk to Bae, or Lacey’s husband, although the fury simmering in the pit of her stomach made it hard for her to breathe, let alone eat.

It was a feeling she remembered from long ago. Often enough her father, overtaxed with twins, had directed his anger at Lacey, the one he perceived as the “bad” twin. In reality, they were equally unruly, and had both their fair share of ideas. But Lacey was the easier target, more vulnerable, more likely to break. Of course she was singled out as the one to be blamed. Belle still remembered the sickness that her father’s unfairness had caused her. It was the same roiling sickness she felt now, a tight knot inside her, between her lungs, like a stone with razor-sharp edges. She didn’t get up to leave the table this time, after dinner, and Lacey’s husband looked at her as if he saw her for the first time.

“How was your day?” Belle asked, and for a moment she feared she had caused him a heart attack. She wanted to find out what was going on, unobtrusively, but it seemed like every word out of Lacey’s mouth was like a blow of a broad axe. Reuben dabbed the corner of his mouth with his napkin, and Belle knew to recognize a stalling tactic when she saw one.

“What do you want, Lacey?” he asked, after placing the piece of cloth carefully folded beside his plate, and Belle realized that she should have made a plan, should have learned a speech by heart and thought about every possible scenario this could go down before throwing herself head first into a battle she had not the least idea about. But it was too late for that now.

“I wanted to know how your day was. Am I not supposed to know?” She flinched when he pushed back his chair and got to his feet, grabbing his cane and leaning heavily onto it. She had to strain her neck to look up at him, and she felt small. Vulnerable.

“It’s not as if you ever cared. So forgive me for being a little surprised at your sudden interest.”

“I’m sorry. I care now.” Belle was not sure if an apology was the best tactic, but it slipped out before she was able to reign it in. He looked so raw, so short of breaking and splintering, that she felt as if she should try to reassure him that she had no evil plan, no twisted agenda at the back of her mind. Well, maybe not evil and twisted. But an agenda she had. Her words seemed to come as a shock to him, and he furrowed his brows as if he was trying to figure out a hidden meaning behind them. After staring at her for a while, he sank back on his chair, deflated by his failure to detect anything mean or ambiguous about her question. Once more Belle wondered what exactly Lacey had done to this family. And what made her do whatever it was she had done.

“My day was uneventful.” He tossed it at her like a bait, as if he was probing her. Waiting for her to reveal what she really wanted. Belle realized that she had to tread even more carefully than she had thought.

“And is that a good thing?”

“I suppose every day I don’t get a call from the police to pick you up from the station is a good day.”

Belle’s elbow slipped from the table and she almost crashed down onto her empty plate. She hadn’t seen that coming.

“Everything alright?” he asked, eyes narrowed, and a malicious smirk tugging at his lips. “Or have you already forgotten? How much have you been drinking lately, dearie?”

Belle had no answer. And how could she? She had no idea.

“That much, huh?” He clawed his fingers into his napkin, kneading it, and Belle noticed his well kept nails and the ring on his finger, catching the light in the big opalescent stone that was set on it. Her mind wouldn’t come up with anything, was absolutely blank with the realization that Lacey had sent her into a labyrinth without exit. She had told her everything about her daily routine, about her friends and her house, and her clothes, but she had neglected to mention anything important. Belle was completely lost, and for a moment her head swam with the hopelessness of her situation. She pushed back her chair and got to her feet, almost blind with the tears stinging in her eyes.

There sat this man she didn’t know, hating her for something she had not the least idea about, looking at her as if he was enjoying the pain he caused her. As if he was enjoying to see her humiliated and reminded of her failure. For the length of a heartbeat Belle forgot that she wasn’t Lacey. Forgot that this was not her house, not her husband and not her life. For one short moment, she was Lacey, and she was furious.

But the next moment, she realized that she was participant in a game, one of which she didn’t know the rules and which she didn’t know how to play. This man knew probably only too well how to corner her sister, how to make her crack. He knew how to play, but he didn’t know that the game had changed.

“I’m sorry that you feel the need to attack me when I try to have a conversation. I forgot how much you hate me.” She tried to keep her face impassive, tried not to betray that in reality, she had no idea how much he did or didn’t hate her sister. But judging by the way they lived, they hated each other a lot. Under her scrutiny, he looked down at his empty plate and sighed.

“Oh Lacey. If I could only trust the things you say. If I only knew that it’s not another drop of poison dripping from your lips. How often do you want me to believe your lies?”

“Why is it a lie when I ask how your day was?”

“Just give it a rest.” He rose, throwing the napkin away, and started for the door. But when he passed her, he paused, halting close enough at her side for every hair on her body to stand on end. She felt his breath tickling over her neck when he bent down his head, and his lips almost grazed the shell of her ear.

“I really wish I could believe you”, he whispered, and his words trickled down her spine and came to a rest between her pelvic bones. Belle remained still, pinned in place, even after the tapping of his cane faded away and she heard the door of his bedroom close behind him.

Only when Helen entered the room to take away the empty dishes before she left, Belle came back to her senses. She started to suspect that there was far more between Lacey and her husband than the death of a child. And she began to suspect that, maybe, Reuben was not the best place to start if she wanted to find out what it was that had poisoned their lives. Moreover, she realized that it would be best for her to stay away as far as possible from Lacey’s husband. Because her reaction to his words on her skin still prickled inside her. And that was not a good sign.


	5. In the Study

Something was out of tune, was ever so slightly off about Lacey. He started to look at her more and more often, over dinner, and she looked…different. Less sodden. Healthier. She met his eyes from time to time, and sometimes, when she had been unaware of his eyes on her and met his gaze accidentally, she even smiled at him, as if she had forgotten _not_ to smile. Those smiles were different, too, had lost their edge of cruelty. They came unintentional, as if they erupted from somewhere beyond the cage she had built herself, and each one of those flittering smiles managed to wriggle its way through his defenses. He wanted to see her smile again, and he caught himself more and more often staring at her, hoping for a glimpse of a smile. It could all be part of a new scheme. A new lie. But she gave no sign that she planned something devious, that she found another way to hurt them, to get at them. Instead, he found her more and more interested in…being alive? He couldn’t tell.

But when he came home one day, ten days after he noticed her changes for the first time (and he counted every day since, waiting for her to revert back), and found her reading in the living room, he knew that something had definitely changed. She looked up at him when he tossed his keys into the bowl on the sideboard, and a smile fluttered over her face, fleetingly, as if she had, again, forgotten who he was. As if he was someone who deserved to be smiled at. He had forgotten how beautiful her smile could be when it wasn’t drenched in hatred, and his stomach clenched as if it expected a punch to come. Then she remembered, and the smile fell from her face, was replaced by that look of confusion she wore so often recently, with an edge of anger, directed into that void stretching between them. He turned away and went into the kitchen, where he found Bae and Helen. The woman’s expression got more sour from day to day, and when he entered the kitchen, she waved a wooden spoon at him and presented him with a face full of indignation.

“She’s in the living room”, she said, and Gold tried to keep his face straight. He had noticed that Lacey ventured out of her room more and more often. As if she was probing the territory.

“I noticed”, he said, and Helen creased her nose in disgust.

“She sits there and reads.”

“Well, technically, she lives here and is free to sit wherever she pleases.”

“But how am I supposed to keep her drunken you-know-what away from Bae when she plants it in plain sight?”

“She doesn’t look drunk to me.” In fact, as far as he could tell, she hadn’t been out to drink herself beyond the loss of dignity and mother tongue for quite a while now. He hoped that this was a good sign. But Helen seemed to trust Lacey even less than he did. She folded her arms, very nearly hitting herself with her wooden spoon, and frowned.

“She tried again to help Bae with homework. And she offered to read a story to him.”

“As long as she doesn’t try to lay her hands on him or feed him a poisoned apple, she may sit in the living room.” This time it was him that was nearly hit by her spoon, and he wasn’t entirely sure that it wasn’t on purpose. He had to admit that he, too, felt slightly uncomfortable at the idea of Lacey creeping around his son. Bae watched their argument with his eyes as big as saucers, but it took Reuben longer than it should have to realize that Bae stared from Helen to him and from him to a spot behind him, to Lacey, standing in the kitchen door, her book pressed to her chest, with her finger as a bookmark, and looking so utterly wounded that it twisted his insides all over again.

“So you are afraid I could do that?” she asked, and he was not sure what to answer. He only knew that he didn’t want to discuss this in front of his son and their housekeeper. Lacey waited, biting her lips and looking so genuinely hurt that he almost believed it. He wanted to believe, but he knew better than to trust anything she said or did.

“Let’s not talk about that here”, he said, meaning _let’s not talk about it at all_. And it should have been enough. This time, however, it wasn’t. She stepped aside and gestured for him to leave the kitchen, as if she expected him to do as she said. He was torn between flat out refusing her, humiliating her in front of the housekeeper and his son (and he wasn’t opposed to that), and complying, just out of curiosity. He decided for the latter, and she followed him into his study. She didn’t protest when he closed the door behind them after she stepped into the room.

“Do you really think I would hurt Bae?” She didn’t look at him, had her back turned to him as if it was too hurtful to look at him. He stared at the doorknob in his hand, wondering if she thought he would ever forget.

“You mean _again_?”

She whirled around and stared at him, white as chalk. So innocent. As if she had really forgotten. Maybe she had drowned the guilt in alcohol. That was, if she ever felt guilt about it. He pushed himself away from the door and stepped to his bookcase, wondering if it was one of his books she held clutched so tightly to her chest. He tried to remember if he had ever seen her read.

“I’m sorry”, she whispered, and she sounded hoarse. And he almost believed her. Wanted to believe her.

“You should talk to Dr. Hopper about that”, he said, still looking at his bookcase, although he couldn’t decipher a single title there. His mind seemed unable to grasp anything beside the sound of her ragged breathing. He didn’t want to hear it. Nor did he want to hear that she was sorry for something she had shoved so far to the back of her mind that she could pretend she didn’t remember it. He begrudged her this ability to forget, and to ignore, because he couldn’t forget, and he desperately wanted to. He wanted to forget that her hatred had driven her so far as to hurt the one thing he loved most in this world. He wanted to remember that he had once loved her, and that he still hoped for that to come back, even after all the pain and agony they had caused each other. Because for a very short time, they had been really, truly happy. Before he knew that it was all a lie. And before their life turned into hell.  

She stepped closer, and her scent wafted over him. He waited for the revulsion her smell always caused him, but it didn’t come, and he wondered briefly if she had changed some of her cosmetics. She smelled almost pleasant, and he found himself…liking it.

“And will you ever again let me talk to your son? I mean, really talk?”

“Why do you even want to, all of a sudden? You hate him almost as much as you hate me.”

She flinched back at the sharpness in his words. “He’s just a kid…”

He had to bite back the laugh that burnt in his throat. Yes, Bae was just a kid. Yet she hated him for exactly that reason. He didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Didn’t want to look at her, wondering how she managed to look at him and look so completely unfazed while flat out lying to him.

“Tell me, Lacey, what are you reading?” He pointed to the book in her clutch, and she stepped back. Somehow, despite it all, he missed her closeness, missed the strange itch he felt when she was so close that he could see the downy hair on her neck when he looked at her. At the same time, though, he was glad to be able to breathe again.

“Rilke.”

He let his fingers glide along the rows of books until he found the spot where one was missing. His fingertips itched when he reached the gap, tingled with the desire to reach into that empty spot and feel…something. As if he could still feel the presence of the book where it had once been. He wondered why she had picked that particular book. Turning to face her, he plucked the slim volume out of her grip and skimmed through the pages, placing his finger where hers had been to mark the page. He knew it almost by heart, had read it so often in the first time after Isobel’s death that the pages turned grey beneath his fingertips.

“Why this?” he asked, and noticed that she came closer again, peeking at the book in his hands.

“It felt important. Most of those books look as if they’ve been hardly ever touched. This one is different. It’s worn.” She put her hand over his on the book, as if she wanted to keep him from taking it away for good, and the sudden contact of skin stung like the heavy air right before a thunderstorm. He inhaled sharply.

“You’ve…changed. I never saw you reading.”

She tilted her head, and there was that smile again, the smile that made him feel like he was worth it to be smiled at. He wondered if she had ever smiled at him like that before. Lacey took back the book, and his hand, suddenly empty, longed to touch her. But when he lifted his hand to her cheek, stopping within an inch of her skin, just below her jaw, she turned her face away, as if pulled by invisible strings. He wanted to pull back, suddenly panicked by the urge to feel her skin again, but instead, he let his hand glide down her side, caressing the air, down along her neck, over her shoulder, down her arm, so close but never quite touching her, until he reached her free hand, clawing into her skirt. He had avoided her eyes, scared of what he might see there, but now he looked at her, stepped closer again, hardly breathing, and waited for her to turn her hand into his palm, to meet his fingertips – or step away, draw back. Her eyes were filled with wonder, and with something that might have been panic.

“Reuben…” she whispered, and his name rolled clumsily from her tongue, as if her mouth was filled with pebbles. She trembled, almost like a doe sensing the hunter. He realized that he wanted to kiss her. Realized that his lips prickled in his desire to feel her skin, to cross that distance and feel the sparks bite into him. Realized that something was decidedly and unmistakably wrong. He stepped back, exactly at the same time that she stepped back, too, clearing her throat. His own throat felt as if it was blocked by something big and fuzzy.

“I’m sorry”, he said, panting as if he had been running. She creased her forehead in an expression akin to pain, and squeezed her eyes shut. It was a grimace, but all he noticed was how long her eyelashes were, how dark in her pale face. And while he stared at her face, he felt as if he didn’t know her, didn’t recognize her anymore. She really had changed.

“It’s up to Bae”, he said, going back to the reason they were talking at all. “If he wants you to spent time with him, I will allow it. But never alone. Do you understand?” She may have changed, but that didn’t mean that he would trust her. He wasn’t naïve. Nor was he careless. She might have forgotten it, but he still saw her, her claws clutching Bae’s arms, screaming at him and shaking him like a ragdoll. She had forgotten a lot of that first time after Isobel’s death. He had not. Each and every moment was etched into him with a blunt knife, and every single cut still seeped blood and pus. He wondered if he would ever heal.

She looked as if she wanted to argue, and he narrowed his eyes, stared her down. Shoved back the confusion tingling in his limbs and concentrated on the moment.

“Did you reconsider cancelling your appointments?” he asked, and she nodded.

“I will see Dr. Hopper tomorrow. Shall I…would you like to meet when I’m in town?”

“Why?” She never asked him to meet. She did all she could to stay the hell away from him. She seemed to realize that her strange wish threw him off. Unsettled him. Her face changed again, and became more recognizable. There she was, Lacey, haughty, and so easily offended.

“I just wanted to be nice. That’s all.”

“Yes. Why?”

“I have no idea. Obviously it’s a waste of effort.” She turned and started for the door, but he didn’t want her to go. He wanted her to stay just a little longer…just a moment.

“Lacey!” He tried to say it soft, not to startle her, but her name came always more like a hiss over his lips. She stopped and turned back, her face full of suspicion. He couldn’t blame her.

“You really are changed.” He had to inhale deeply before he could continue, mustering all that was left of his courage. “It’s…good to see.”

He detested the hoarseness of his voice, the breathless and thin sound of it, and when she wrinkled her nose, he was sure that she would show her true face now, would go back to being cruel, and mock him for falling for a semblance of kindness. Maybe not more than an imitation of it.

“Thank you”, she whispered, and her voice was just as hoarse as his had been. Then she slipped out, and the tension left him, fell off him like a veil. He felt as if he could finally breathe again, after holding his breath for so long that black stars danced along the edges of his vision. He looked down at his hand, at his fingers weaving a pattern in thin air, as if they still searched for something to touch, and he made a fist to still the emptiness itching under his skin.


	6. On the Couch

Belle tried for the tenth time in two days to reach Lacey. She got more and more nervous, the closer her session with Dr. Hopper came. After all, he was Lacey’s therapist, and chances that he didn’t immediately recognize that she wasn’t Lacey…well, they were slim, at best. Finally, her sister answered the phone, when Belle had already parked her car in front of Dr. Hopper’s office.

“Where have you been?” Belle hissed into the phone, and Lacey reacted with a nervous chuckle.

“Goodness, Belle, you sound tense.”

“I wonder why. I wasn’t prepared for this.” She had difficulties not to shout. Or to cry. Lacey didn’t answer at once.

“I’m sorry. I was afraid that you wouldn’t come if I told you…that.” Lacey’s voice trembled, and Belle could feel how upset her sister was. How afraid. Or maybe it was her own fear she felt. A nervous smile made her bare her teeth, although Lacey couldn’t see it.

“I would have come nevertheless. You’re my sister. But I have no clue what’s going on.”

“Well, as long as you keep to yourself, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

Belle stared at the wheel of Lacey’s car, at a loss. Her head was close to exploding, and she stared blindly out of the car. A painful throbbing above her brows made her rub her forehead. “Lacey, I’m about to have a session with your therapist. I won’t be able to fool him.”

“Crap. I cancelled that for the next six weeks.”

“Yes, and Hopper called your husband to tell him that.”

“Crap on a toast. That little shit…”

“Lacey, what am I supposed to do? Don’t you think he will call Reuben again as soon as he finds out that you’re gone? I have a feeling as if that would make your husband go mental. Not to mention the jailer…”

“Helen?” Lacey snickered.

“A warning would have been nice.”

“Belle, you’re totally exaggerating. Look, you don’t have to talk to Archie. Just sit on his couch. He will ask you how you feel, if you’re still angry, and you will say yes and let him drill you with questions for the next 45 minutes. I never talk to him.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.”

Lacey made a huffing sound into the phone. Belle waited for her to find something to say. She knew what she wanted to hear. At last Lacey grunted. “He got into your head, didn’t he?”

“Lacey, what exactly happened between you two? What did you do?”

“Nothing. Well, maybe I lost it. Once.”

“Oh Lacey. When it happened only once, why do you live in a prison?”

“It’s not a prison.”

That one sentence betrayed more than anything else she could have said that Lacey needed help. If she didn’t see how terrible her life was, how bleak, and how much she had lost herself, then it meant she didn’t want to see.

“Lacey…”

“Look, Belle, it’s not a prison. I go out all the time. I have fun. I’m shopping all the time, and I go out…”

“And you end up with the police, and Reuben has to pick you up from the station. And you’re not allowed to be alone with your stepson. And your husband…” Belle nearly choked. She didn’t want to talk about him. Not after that moment in his study the day before. Her stomach was still churning. No matter what had happened between him and his wife, he still felt something for Lacey, that much she could tell, and it went beyond the cold and the hatred. He was so afraid, so frail, and although she was, above all, still angry, she couldn’t help but ache a little for him, too. His coldness was nothing more than a mask he put on to hide how lost he was.

“I don’t see a downside. It’s not as if I wanted to be alone with the boy.” Lacey wore a mask, too. Belle sighed.

“His name is Bae.”

“I know.”

“Lacey, what exactly do you want me to do?” There was a long silence on the other end, and Belle heard a rustle when Lacey moved the phone.

“Just sit it out until I come back. And don’t talk to Archie.” Lacey’s voice sounded muffled.

“Will you come back?”

There was another pause. And Lacey’s answer sounded almost like a question when it finally came. “Yeah.”

“Ok, I will talk to you later, after that session. And you will tell me the whole damn story from the beginning to the end. I hate it to walk through a maze without knowing which monster will wait for me around the next turn…”

“Always the pretty language, sister. Uh, the battery is dying…” Lacey was cut off, and Belle suspected that not the battery was the culprit. She inhaled deeply, putting the phone away. Before she got out of the car, she tried to breathe steadily, counting to ten and backwards, twice. It didn’t really help. She knew that her performance as Lacey was poor. It had been different when they were teenagers and just fooling around, but this was dead serious. In a sudden rush of panic, Belle grabbed her purse and checked if she still had her ID, in case she needed to prove that she really wasn’t Lacey. Everything was as it should be, but the panic kept her trembling.  

“Ok. There is no worth in being brave when there’s nothing to lose, right? _A woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman_ …Can’t be that hard to be a sister pretending to be a sister. Julie would rock that on her left cheek.” Belle felt silly talking to herself, but since Lacey wasn’t at her side to soothe to her, she needed her own voice to calm herself down. And memorizing lines from her favorite movie helped somewhat.

Appearing angry was the easiest part of it all, since she still wasn’t over the fact how unprofessional this so called doctor acted when he betrayed Lacey to her husband. But when she sat on his couch, her knees tucked under her chin, and watched him read over Lacey’s file, she knew that it would be hard not to talk to him. He looked just so genuinely nice, and when he put down the file and smiled at her, she had a hard time remembering that she was supposed to scorn him.

“So…how do you feel, Lacey? Are you still angry?”

“Yes.” She hissed a little and watched him shuffling with his papers and making a noncommittal sound. She wondered why Lacey even went to those appointments when she didn’t use them to talk about her feelings. Maybe it wasn’t her idea to come here. Maybe Reuben made her go. The thought turned her stomach upside down once more. She didn’t want this therapist to find out that she wasn’t Lacey, because he had already proven that he was not trustworthy, but on the other hand, he might know more than anyone else what was really going on.

“Why did you tell Reuben that I cancelled our appointments?”

He looked up, surprised, as if he hadn’t expected her to say anything at all, and Belle bit her lips. She should have listened to Lacey. Lacey knew her life and the people in it better than Belle, and she knew how to manipulate people. And Belle knew that she was already dangerously close to exposing herself just by smiling at Reuben. But she couldn’t help that. Everyone in this family was so heartbreakingly lonely and afraid.

“I’m sorry, I…look, you know how convincing he can be. I realize that this was not very professional of me, but I was between a rock and a hard place here…” He was stammering, and Belle wondered what he was trying to tell her. Was it worry for Lacey or for himself that made him call Reuben? And she had no idea what he meant. Lacey’s husband was perhaps not the nicest person she ever met – far from it – but she was pretty sure that he was not wandering around and threatening to put people into concrete shoes and send them swimming. He didn’t look like that type of man. More like someone who, like Lacey, manipulated people, and moved them around like pawns on a chess board. She could understand what had brought them together, but she didn’t understand what broke them apart.

Dr. Hopper cleared his throat. “Do you think that Mr. Gold worries about you? Maybe he isn’t as angry as you think he is. Maybe he is sorry, too. Have you thought about that?”

Belle creased her forehead before she remembered to make a blank face. Sorry for what? Dr. Hopper waited a while for her to answer, and it was harder than she had imagined not to fill this empty space he created. It was a very effective technique, and she wondered how Lacey managed to sit there and remain silent.

“How would it make you feel if he were sorry?”

Belle chewed her lips. If she only knew what he was talking about.

“Have you thought about my suggestion to find something to do, maybe find a purpose? Something to get you out of the house?”

He didn’t sound as if he expected her to answer. In fact, he sounded as if he had made his peace with the fact that Lacey didn’t react to his questions. And Belle wondered if Reuben knew how these sessions went. Probably not. She battled the urge to give herself away and bury this therapist (the worst she ever met, really) with questions of her own, trying to find out what happened, what was the origin of this conflict, but in the end, she didn’t trust him, and before she gave her sister away, she wanted to know what the consequences would be for Lacey. Though, when she left his office, she was more than a little disappointed that Dr. Hopper had not noticed on his own that he wasn’t dealing with her sister. It was almost as if Lacey had become invisible, and no one looked closely enough at her to notice her absence.

At least one of his suggestions sparked something inside her, and when she was at the library to pick out a book to read to Bae, she took a flyer with her that announced the need of volunteers to catalogue a large book donation. Maybe getting out of the house wasn’t the worst idea, and even Lacey had told her to go out. Though her sister had probably something different in mind. When she was back at Lacey’s car, she realized that she was close to Reuben’s pawnshop. He had been so surprised when she asked if they would meet. So suspicious. Her chest got a little tight with the memory of how close he had been the day before, in his study. With the memory of what his closeness had done to her. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to shake it off. He was Lacey’s husband. And she wasn’t Lacey. Though the fact that he didn’t notice that said a lot about the state of their marriage. She trembled when she remembered how his hand had stopped just short of her skin. He didn’t dare to touch her, didn’t possess the confidence and instinctiveness of physical contact that came with trust and closeness between two people. It was as if he and Lacey weren’t married at all. The fear lingering in every gesture, paired with his distrust and distaste made her wonder why they were still together at all. What made him hold on to Lacey? And what made Lacey stay?

Belle crossed the street and walked to the shop. She had seen it on her way into town, out of the car, and now she found it without difficulties. A small bell jingled over the door and announced her entrance. The salesroom was empty, and Belle used that brief moment before Reuben would turn up to look around. She had no idea if Lacey ever came here, and how familiar she was with Reuben’s work space. She let her fingertips glide over the edge of a glass counter holding jewelry and inhaled the scent of wood polish and spices. She liked it that there wasn’t the typical smell of old things in this shop, although it was stuffed with lots of old things. But everything was neatly organized, and Belle detected a lot that reminded her of Lacey’s home. A taste in dark woods and rich colors, and a touch of delicacy…Belle knew that this wasn’t Lacey’s style. Lacey was messy, or at least had been. Now she wasn’t so sure anymore.

“What are you doing here?”

Belle nearly jumped, and the book in her grip slipped to the ground when Reuben addressed her from behind. She hadn’t heard him approaching, and she suspected that he did that on purpose. When she turned around to face him, he was frowning at her as if she was trespassing into private territory. She pressed her lips together and picked up the book. What exactly was she doing here?

“I was at the library to pick out a book for me and Bae to read. I wanted to ask if this one is ok with you.” She extended the book, and he winced as if she had slapped him. Belle was not sure what to do when he just stared down at the book she was outstretching, and when he didn’t take it, the silence grew uncomfortable. Deafening. The book in her grip started to tremble, and she wanted to pull it back. That was the moment when he grasped her hand, holding her as if she was breakable and could crumble to dust in his grip. His hand felt cool on hers, dry. A little callused.

“You don’t need my approval, Lacey. I’m sure the book is fine.” His voice was only a low hum, as if he was bewildered by her seeking out his opinion. Only then he seemed to notice that he was touching her, and he stared at their joined hands almost like in shock. In letting go of her hand, his fingertips whispered over the inside of her wrist, and Belle needed a moment to realize that she had held her breath. She let it out with a sigh and tucked the book into her purse.

“I asked the librarian for help in picking it out. She said that the kids love that series.” She followed him as he limped to the counter, and she noticed the way he rubbed his fingers together in circles, an unconscious movement, as if he was remembering the feel of something with his fingertips. Her skin, she realized. He was recalling the feeling of her skin beneath his fingertips. It made her bones hurt and her heart clench. He was so lonely. So starved for…something. Contact. It was hard to remember that she was there to help Lacey, then. It was not her design to help _him_. Yet she wanted to.  

“How was your session with Dr. Hopper?”

His question ripped her out of her thoughts. “Maybe you should ask him”, she said, and he frowned. The vulnerability in his stance vanished, replaced by the coldness he wore like armor.

“I don’t do that” he said, and she raised her eyebrows. Maybe he didn’t inquire after the content of Lacey’s sessions, but he definitely had an eye on them. Cold sweat formed along her spine, and Belle had to grit her teeth to bite back the anger that threatened to break out of her, bubbling up inside her like magma.

“If you say so”, she choked out, and a grimace flitted over his face. Maybe it was regret. Maybe distaste. “I'll see you at dinner”, she murmured, and he cocked his head and watched her silently as she left. He might be lonely and just as much in pain as Lacey was, but he wasn’t any more willing to get out of his cage than her sister was. Maybe less, given the fact that Lacey had temporarily left the cage.

When she came home, Helen waited for her with a frown, looking a little as if someone had stitched her eyebrows together, and an air of impatience.

“You said you wanted to read to Bae. Now would be a good time.”

“Hi, Mama.” Bae stood half hidden behind the dragon lady, and Belle tilted her head and smiled.

“Hi, Bae. I was at the library and picked out a book. Shall we look at it together?”

He looked at Helen as if he wanted to know if it was ok, and that felt like a punch to Belle’s solar plexus. What had happened to this family that a little boy needed a watchdog to be with his stepmother? Only when Helen nodded, unsmiling, and without taking her eyes of Belle, Bae stepped around her and took Belle’s outstretched hand. His fingers were a little sticky, and warm, and Belle swallowed, trying to get rid of the lump in her throat. They sat down on the couch in the living room, side by side, and Belle had to keep herself from wrapping her arm around the little boy and pulling him closer. She was sure that Helen would be at her side to rip him out of her arms if she ever attempted something like that.

“Do you know this?” Belle asked, tapping the book with her painted nails, and Bae shook his head. He stared at her with big eyes, but more than his eyes on her, it was Helen’s silent watching that made Belle nervous.

“Well, everyone should know how to train a dragon, don’t you think?”

Bae nodded, biting his lip, and skidded a little closer. When Belle started reading, he peeked inside the book, and after a while, his head sank to her shoulder, a pleasant weight that filled her with warmth. She read one chapter, and then, because Bae was so curious how the story would continue, another one, and all that time, Helen stood in the doorframe and watched them. Belle longed to ask if she didn’t have anything to do, but she knew better than to provoke the housekeeper. She suspected that a real dragon was far less dangerous than that woman with her stony eyes.

Belle read until Reuben arrived at home, but when he stepped into the living room and placed his keys in the bowl on the sideboard, her voice got too hoarse to read further. She trailed off.

“Mama, you can’t stop there! You haven’t even finished the sentence.” Bae got to his knees, bouncing on the couch, and looked at her, with eyes just as pleading as a puppy.

“I will read that sentence again tomorrow, ok? I’m a little hoarse now.” She tried to smile, but with Reuben’s eyes on her, she didn’t manage more than a quivering curving of her lips. Bae pouted, but before he could say another thing, Reuben called him, and the boy slipped from the couch to say hi to his dad. Belle noticed that Helen was still standing there and watching her, and she saw how the housekeeper exchanged a brief look with Lacey’s husband.

“Papa, did you know that Toothless is a tiny little dragon in the book and not at all a Night Fury?” Bae sounded a little upset about that, and Belle bit her lip to keep her smile from showing.

“I did not. That’s…anticlimactic.”

“It is”, Bae said, with a solemn face, as if he knew exactly what his father meant. But then he realized that he was not entirely sure, and he turned back to Belle. “What is anticlaptic?”

“It means disappointing”, Belle said, and she couldn’t hold back her chuckle then. But it stuck in her throat when she met Reuben’s eyes, and he furrowed his brows. Belle swallowed, and didn’t realize that they stared at each other, until Bae broke the tense silence between them.

“Papa, can Mama watch cartoons with us after dinner?”

Reuben tore his gaze away from her and looked at his son, who had his puppy eyes again, made a face as if he was begging for a treat. Belle was glad that Reuben looked away from her, because she was sure that her panic was showing on her face. She couldn’t watch TV with him and Bae, sitting with them on Reuben’s bed, in his bedroom…and she was absolutely sure that Lacey would never do that. It would be the worst idea ever to come too close to Reuben and his son. The closer she came to Reuben, the more likely it was that he found out. The closer she came to Bae, the more likely it was that the boy would get hurt when Lacey came back. Not physically, perhaps. She believed Lacey, and she knew that her sister had to be in a very dark place to lash out like this. But what if he started liking her, thinking she was his stepmom…and everything changed again when Lacey came back? If she came back? Belle didn’t want to take that risk, and she realized, with a pang of dread, that she shouldn’t have started to get closer to the boy from the start.

But he was so alone, so hurting, so miserable…They all were. It hurt Belle physically to watch this family, to see their wretchedness, it stitched her sides and pierced her guts, and it twisted her inside out and upside down. She couldn’t bear it. Reuben looked down at his son, helpless as to what to answer, and Belle hoped he would find a reason to decline. But he looked from the boy back to her, with narrowed eyes that warned her not to do the wrong thing, whatever that was, and said, “That’s up to Mama.”

Bae looked from his dad to her, and hopped back to the couch and grabbed her arm. “Please, do watch Phineas and Ferb with us! That’s the coolest cartoon ever!”

She couldn’t break his heart. Was absolutely unable to do what she ought to do. “Ok, Bae”, she croaked, unable to breathe. And she knew that this was absolutely, undeniably and without a doubt the wrongest thing to do.


	7. On the Phone

It was the most constrained dinner Belle had to go through since she took Lacey’s place, and she had no idea how she should survive watching cartoons with Reuben and Bae after that. She was amazed that she managed to eat anything at all, especially since the pasta tasted dusty and clogged her throat like gravel. She didn’t look up from her plate, afraid to find Reuben watching her, with that look of wonder and mistrust. He had expected her to turn Bae down.

She should have turned him down, and while she choked down her pasta, all she could think was that she was going to ruin it all. But even less than the idea of failing Lacey, Belle could bear the idea of breaking a little boy’s heart. When she got up after dinner, tugging at Lacey’s tight dress (and silently cursing her sister for her taste in clothing), starting for the door, Reuben held her back by placing his hand on her arm.

“You go ahead Bae, we’ll be with you in a minute”, he said to his son, and the boy scurried off, stomping up the stairs. Reuben looked after him, and his hand was burning through the long sleeve of her dress. Belle’s skin started to prickle, her flesh tingling with his touch. When they heard the door of the bedroom upstairs close behind Bae, Reuben turned to look at her.

“What are you doing, Lacey? What do you want from him?”

“I don’t have some evil scheme, if that’s what you’re asking.” Belle plucked his hand from her arm, but the feeling of his touch remained.

“There always is something with you.”

Belle bit her lip, knowing that she could say nothing to dispel his doubts in her sister. She knew that he was worried she would hurt his son, would take his tiny heart and shatter it, and it was terrible to know that this was almost inevitably what was about to happen.

“Why didn’t you just say no then?”

He stared at her lips, and Belle had to keep herself from covering her mouth with her hand and hide it from his eyes.

“Just know that, if this is one of your little games, I will make you regret this.”

Belle shivered with the coldness in his voice, and her skin crawled under his scrutiny. “Is that a threat?” she asked, with her throat so tight that she was afraid her vocal cords would snap.

“No. It’s a fact, dearie. Now let’s go upstairs.” He gestured for her to walk in front of him, and Belle felt like treading a minefield. She tugged the hem of Lacey’s dress down once more, before she remembered that she had to act natural, at ease, not as if she was trapped in the wrong body. There was absolutely no way how she could make this right.

In the end, it wasn’t so bad. Bae placed himself between Reuben and her on the bed, and after a while, Belle even dared to ease herself a little more onto the bed, instead of poising on the edge of the mattress, ready to jump and run if need be. And Reuben, who seemed just as tense at first, relaxed a little, and even laughed with Bae. The sound of that laugh, deep and soft, rippled though Belle and left her even more confused.

She tried not to let her eyes wander around, tried to act as if she wasn’t for the first time in the bedroom where Reuben and Lacey once had slept together. Just like Lacey’s own bedroom, this one had no sign left that Lacey had ever been there. There were no pictures of her or her husband, or anyone aside from Bae.

“That was fun”, she said, when Bae’s cartoon was over, and he seemed to be ecstatic that she actually liked his series.

“You can watch with us again, tomorrow”, he said, and Belle looked quickly up to see Reuben’s reaction. A muscle twitched in his jaw.

“Maybe Mama doesn’t want to”, he rasped, barely unclenching his teeth.

“But you want to, right?” Bae watched her, and the pleading look in his eyes left her no choice.

“I do.” Reuben flinched at her words, but he didn’t say anything further.

Back in her own room, Belle texted Lacey, but she got no answer. When she tried to call her sister the next morning, she went straight to voicemail (her own, since it was her phone), just as the seven times after that. Instead of sleeping through the mornings, Belle started to go to the library and volunteered in cataloguing. It was awkward at first, since the librarian suspected her to be joking when she said she wanted to volunteer.

“Right. Did they sentence you to community service, Mrs. Gold?” The tall blonde lifted a brow, slowly and so exactly measured that Belle wondered if she practiced that in front of a mirror.

“No. I’m here because I want to be here, but if you’re over-staffed with volunteers, I gladly do something else with my time.” She tried to lift her eyebrow just as elegantly, but she suspected that it resulted in a rather poor imitation. The librarian creased her nose. Belle didn’t dare to ask for her name, since she had no idea if Lacey knew her or not. Just when she thought that she would have to go home and find something else to do, the librarian gave in, with a smirk that left Belle a little jealous of her ability to move that face.

“Very well. No one can say that I don’t believe in miracles. You can call me Mallory. That’s an honor, by the way.” She turned, and Belle sighed, relieved that she had passed the test.

“Lacey”, she said, and Mallory laughed. Even her laugh was elegant.

“Of course. How wouldn’t I know racy Lacey?”

It was the first time that Belle recognized her sister in someone else’s words, and the relief that flushed her at that had her grabbing the front desk for support. She had started to fear that nothing was left of her sister, that the fun-loving person she had once been was gone, and gone forever. But if someone knew her as racy Lacey, then not everything was lost. But it lasted only for a moment, until she realized that racy Lacey didn’t necessarily mean in-love-with-life Lacey.

Belle tried again to reach her sister after leaving the library, but again she went to voicemail.

“I kill you if I ever get my hands on you again”, she snarled into the phone, but all that answered her was silence.

Their routine changed. In the mornings, Belle went to the library, slipping out of the house after Reuben and Bae were gone and before Helen came. She was sure that Helen reported to Reuben that she was gone in the mornings, but he didn’t comment on it. From time to time she felt his gaze on her, when he thought she wasn’t looking, and he looked at her as if he was trying to figure out what was going on in her head. In the evenings, before dinner, she read to Bae, and after dinner they watched cartoons. She never was alone with Bae, and as much as it upset Belle to be watched all the time, it gave her some kind of security, since it prevented her also from getting too close, from letting down her guard. And from raising false hopes in Lacey’s stepson. Because as twisted and wrong as it all was, this was still Lacey’s family. Lacey’s husband who watched her as if he waited for her to explode, waited for something dreadful to happen, watched her with so much fear in his eyes that she couldn’t help but smile at him in her attempt to reassure him.

Still she hadn’t reached her sister.

It was the evening when she had, for the first time, placed her hand on Reuben’s when they sat on his bed, trying to comfort him, to ease his nerves, when Bae, sitting between them, asked if she would bring him to bed and tell him good night. Reuben’s hand beneath hers tensed, and she felt the tremors run through him, but she didn’t look at him, couldn’t look at him. How could she meet his eyes and see the glimmer of hope there, meet his eyes and see the distrust dissolve more with each day?

“If you want to, of course, then I will tuck you in.” She smiled at the boy, and he hopped off the bed to go to the bathroom and brush his teeth. Belle followed him, leaving Reuben behind, staring down at his hand. When she tucked Bae into bed, Reuben watched from the door, waiting until she was finished, and she heard him inhale sharply when Bae flung his arms around her neck and hugged her tightly.

“Is Mama ok?” he whispered into her ear, and Belle had to keep herself from jerking. She stroked his soft curls, unsure what to answer. Was Lacey ok?

“I hope so”, she whispered back, under her breath, hoping Reuben wouldn’t hear her.

“Will she come back?”

“She said she will.”

His embrace became tighter, and she felt him tremble in her arms. “Good. I miss her. But I hope she isn’t sad anymore.”

“I hope so, too.” Belle hugged him a little tighter, burying her face in his hair to hide the tears pricking her eyes. His love for Lacey was so unconditional like only a child’s love could be. When she got to her feet, after kissing him on the forehead, she had to bite the insides of her cheeks to keep her face from betraying her when she passed Reuben. The look on his face sent a shiver down her spine. She wanted to escape to her room, wanted to escape the confrontation she knew was coming, but his voice froze her in place.

“Stay right there.”

Belle turned, slowly, and wiping her sweaty palms on her dress, another one of Lacey’s tight-as-a-glove scraps of cloth. She knew she couldn’t hide, but she was almost a little amazed that his eyes didn’t burn her clothes right off her skin. Only when he was sure that she would stay and wait, he went into Bae’s room to say good night, leaving Belle wondering, no, dreading, that he had heard every single word and was now about to torture her to find out where the real Lacey was. When he came back into the hall, Belle was already trembling. She wasn’t prepared for this. For none of this. He walked towards her, and every thud of his cane made her take a step backwards, until her back collided with a wall. He had backed her into a corner.

“What exactly are you up to, Lacey?” he asked, narrowing his eyes, and Belle swallowed down the lump in her throat. He still thought she was Lacey. The relief made her knees shake, and she pressed her thighs together to stop it. Lacey’s short dress didn’t allow her to hide trembling knees.

“Nothing. Why are you always so suspicious that I might have some evil plan?”

He stepped closer, lifting his hand and grazing her chin with his thumb. His touch sent sparks over her, like butterflies clawing their hooky feet into her skin, and she tilted her head away from his touch, or into it, she was not exactly sure. He trailed her jaw, and grasped her hair, brushing it away from her neck and twisting it around his fist, like a rope. Her breath became shallow.

“I am suspicious, darling, because I know exactly that you will never forgive me. And how could you? So, seeing you act oh so friendly all of a sudden is unsettling.”

Belle had no idea what he was talking about. “I’m sorry, Reuben. Should I have said no?”

“Don’t be sorry. Just tell me what it is you’re after, and I will give it to you. But don’t break Bae’s heart. He’s only a boy.”

She was so sorry for him in this moment that she feared she would shed those tears, feared that she would spill out her secret just to take the pain and the fear away from him. Instead, she told him another lie.

“I’m not going to break his heart. That’s not my intention. I don’t want to break anyone’s heart.”

He stared at her lips, as if it would somehow become possible to detect a lie just by looking at them, and his own lip trembled. No matter how thick the wall around his heart was, in his chest was still beating the heart of a little boy, just as vulnerable as that of his son. Only a little more callused. Although her breath came ragged and shallow, although he was holding her in place with his fist in her hair, she knew that he wouldn’t hurt her, knew that he would shatter under her touch. She lifted her hand, cupped his cheek, and he turned his head into her touch, his eyelids fluttering shut, and inhaling the scent of her skin on her wrist. Stroking gently over his jaw, his cheek, his temple, Belle slid her hand to the back of his head, raking through his hair, and pulled him closer. She knew that this was a mistake. It was wrong. But there he was, his walls crumbling, so vulnerable, and she wanted to give him what he so sorely needed. She wanted to take his broken heart, cradle it, and nurse it back to health, and for a moment she forgot that she wasn’t Lacey, and that this was not her husband, and that this couldn’t possibly be the way to heal him. She forgot all that as she leant forward, carefully, and placed her lips on his. She did nothing more, just watched him, feeling his lips tremble beneath hers. He didn’t open his eyes, squeezed them shut as if he feared he would awake out of a dream if he opened them, and she realized that he held his breath, paralyzed by the contact of her skin on his. Only when she pulled back and let go of him, he opened his eyes, and drew in a deep breath.

He let go of her hair, stepped back, and Belle knew that the moment was over, knew that his defenses slipped back into place when he furrowed his brows and looked at her as if she had just tried to stab him.

“Why did you do that?” he asked, and Belle leant back, against the wall, sighing.

“I don’t know. Is it bad?”

“It’s…strange.”

“It is.” At least on that they could agree on. “If Bae asks me again to bring him to bed, am I allowed to do that?”

“Is it what you want to do?”

Belle closed her eyes and tried to find an answer. Bae knew that she wasn’t his real mom. He had recognized her. So she wasn’t doing any harm when she let him get closer, right? He knew that his real mom would come back. He knew that Lacey was different. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes, meeting Reuben’s gaze. “Yes, it is.”

“Then I will think about it.” He turned and limped to the stairs, leaving her to herself.

Belle went to her room, feeling empty. She had three missed calls from Lacey.

“Ok, story-time.” She took her phone and a coat and went for a walk.

The first thing Lacey said was “I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t find that fucking charging thingy, and when I finally did, I had like fifty thousand missed calls…”

“Sure.” Belle walked a little faster, to bring more space between herself and the house. “So, you wanted to tell me a story.”

Lacey was silent for a moment. “How was your session with Archie?”

“Lacey.”

“You know, this is difficult, and I hate to do it over the phone. It’s not a nice story.”

“That much I figured.” Belle waited for Lacey to continue. Like always when talking to her sister, she was not entirely sure if her feelings were her own. Right now, she felt as if stones were rolling around in her stomach, and she was not sure if it was still from her kiss with Reuben or if it was Lacey’s anxiety she felt. “Maybe you could tell me why you are still living with him…”

“I like being rich.”

Belle snorted. “That’s why all your clothes are so cheap. What’s the real reason?”

Lacey sighed. “I don’t know. We fell for each other, and we fell hard. I don’t think that there’s a place in that house where we haven’t fucked…”

“Ew, I thought he does it only in the dark?”

Lacey laughed. “You’re hilarious. I just wanted to reassure you, that’s all, in case…Yeah, never mind.”

“Ok, tell me.” Belle held her breath when she heard Lacey draw in a shuddering breath. It was almost a sob.

 “When I was maybe 21 weeks along, we had a huge fight. And when I started cramping, he thought I was making it up. Only when I started bleeding, he realized that it was real and took me to the hospital, but there was nothing they could do. He blames himself, as if it would have made a difference. There’s nothing anyone could have done, but he feels so fucking good being miserable. He’s convinced that he still has to care for me, no matter how terrible our life with each other is. He doesn’t get that I just can’t stand to look at him, or Bae. It makes me sick to see how ready they are to suffer, to bear my misery, just out of some perverted sense of cosmic justice. It’s so egoistical of him. Even after I lost it completely, he was still convinced that he has to suffer through this. It’s not about him.” Lacey’s voice was thick, and Belle felt her pain pierce her bones, felt her heart break at the sound of Lacey’s ragged breathing. “It’s not about him.”

“But why…why doesn’t he trust you? Why is he so convinced that everything you say is a lie, and everything you do is part of some big scheme?”

“I guess that’s conditioning. I had two years to get him there, to expect only the worst of me.” Lacey sounded hollow.

“Do you even want to come back?”

There was another pause, and Belle almost expected Lacey not to answer, when her sister sighed. “I wish I could tell you. Because if I knew, you could pack your bags and get out of there.”

“Yeah…” Belle thought about the kiss, remembered how his lips had felt beneath hers. She should tell Lacey. She had to tell her.

But she didn’t. Instead, she decided that it would never happen again.

        


	8. In the Kitchen

She had kissed him. She had kissed him, and it had felt like a first kiss, like that moment when lips met for the first time, with held breath and hearts beating so fast that their thumping sound drowned out everything else, like that moment just before stars collided. She had kissed him, and then she left the house and did not come back. This hurt almost more than the kiss itself. She didn’t say where she went, and he didn’t need to ask. But after those last three weeks, when she had not been out, when she started to be interested in life again, had started to read, to go to the library (thinking he didn’t know it, when there was next to nothing happening in this town that he didn’t know of), he had started to hope. Hoped that maybe not everything between them was beyond repair.

When she left the house, he watched her from the window of the living room, watched as she clutched her phone and pressed it to her ear, and the last thing he saw of her was how she raked through her hair, twisting it around her hand, just like he had done it only minutes before. He watched her melt into the darkness of the night, and all his hopes shattered.

She had started to touch him again, something she had not done in two years. Not once after that cursed night that had turned their lives upside down. Not even when he came to the hospital to take her home, after the fight for Isobel’s life had finally ended, after it lasted for three days. That it lasted even that long was a miracle. Later he had learned that somewhere – he didn’t remember where – the  youngest preemie to survive had been delivered after 22 weeks of pregnancy. They had missed that by a week.

Lacey had been hardly able to stand, but she would rather have killed herself dragging herself out of the wheelchair and into the car than allow him to take her hand. Not that he could blame her. His last touch had been a brutal one.

Because of that, he didn’t trust this new conduct of hers. And maybe she wondered herself what she had done when she kissed him, and now she drank herself into safety once more. Maybe her own doing had her even more shocked than it shocked him. He wasn’t surprised when his phone rang in the morning, after he had opened the shop. He knew the number of the police station by heart.

“Sheriff Swan”, he said, after picking up, and “Gold” she answered, in her usual rather cool manner of speaking with him. She didn’t like him, but then, who did? “Is it that time again, Sheriff?”

“Yes. You can pick her up, I think she has slept it off.”

He hung up and stared at the phone. No, he had just as many reasons not to trust Lacey as she had not to trust him. So better not trust her at all. But he felt the weight of something shattered settle in the pit of his stomach as he drove to the station. Despite it all, he had hoped that this time, she wouldn’t fall back to old habits.

When he limped into the station, she sat on the cot in her cell, and for a very brief moment there was so much guilt and shame on her face that she didn’t look like herself at all. Then it was replaced by fury, and there she was, unmistakably Lacey. But she pressed her lips together and didn’t say a word until Sheriff Swan opened the cell and let her walk out.

“She didn’t have her ID on her, but since this isn’t the first time…”

“I told you, I was not drunk.” Lacey managed even something close to dignity, although there was a run in her hose and her face was smeared with makeup as if she had cried herself to sleep that night. She looked terrible.

“Breath analyzer said something different.” Swan was no one to fool.

Lacey opened her mouth and snapped it shut again. Her pout made him think of the kiss again, of her lips sending sparks over his skin, and his stomach roiled painfully. He was inclined to believe Sheriff Swan. They had done this often enough, after all.

“Thank you, Sheriff”, he said, taking Lacey’s arm to guide her out of the station. This, at least, was new. It felt natural enough as long as there were enough layers of clothing between them.

“Yeah, until next time then.” The Sheriff looked at Lacey as if she didn’t expect the separation to last long. He wanted to answer something noncommittal, but Lacey suddenly dug her heels into the ground and turned around.

“This was very unprofessional of you. I was nowhere near drunk enough to grant a night in prison.” Her voice trembled a bit.

“Come on, Lacey. You know how this works. No need to act as if it was the first time.” Despite his anger, fueled by his disappointment, he managed to sound calm. She turned to face him, panting, and there was something hurt and vulnerable beneath the surface. He wished to grasp it, to drag it out and see it, examine it from up close, because it was something he hadn’t seen with her for a long time, but before he knew what exactly it was he saw, it was gone again. She narrowed her eyes and plucked his hand from her arm.

“Yeah, right. Apparently everyone here is just so fucking used to everything that they wouldn’t see a change if it bit them in the ass.” Every word was clipped and sharp, cutting like a scalpel, and he frowned.

“I thought you said she slept it off”, he said to the Sheriff, and Swan shrugged.

“I’m right here. You can talk to me.” Lacey stared at him as if she was short of lunging at him and decapitate him with her nails. It was time to get her out of there before she managed to get herself locked up again. Miss Swan was already fondling the handcuffs on her belt, and he contemplated asking her if he could borrow them. Something was definitely off with Lacey.

He didn’t need the cuffs in the end, because Lacey seemed to accept that she stood no chance in this fight. Or maybe her rationality kicked in, after the alcohol wore off. Still, when she climbed into the car, she looked as if she was about to cry. And that was most unlike her.

“What happened, dearie?” he asked, but instead of answering, she folded her arms in front of her chest and stared out of the window. When he started the car and pulled out of the parking lot, she found her voice again.

“Can you let me out at the library?”

“You’re not cataloguing after a night spent in a cell and looking like that. I’m taking you home.”

She rubbed her eyes and stared at her blackened fingertips. “So you know.”

“Of course I know. What do you think, that I let you run around town without knowing what you’re up to? You should know me better.”

“Someone has serious trust issues here.” She looked out the window again and missed his grimace. She must have been seriously drunk to expect him to have the least bit of trust in her.

“What did you expect? Smile a little at me, kiss me, and I would forget everything? Not even you are that stupid.”

She flinched as if he had slapped her, and he regretted his words. But getting the call from Sheriff Swan, seeing her revert back, seeing her behind bars…it had made him angry, had made him want to hurt her, too, just as it hurt _him_ to see her like that after she had kissed him. It made him realize that nothing about that kiss had been honest.

He went inside with her after parking in front of the house. Helen was cleaning the hallway when they entered, and her eyes flitted from Lacey to him with that cold expression of “I told you so” in her eyes. Lacey didn’t look at the housekeeper, didn’t look at anyone. She just stared to the ground and wanted to disappear to her room, but something in the way she hung her head and drew her shoulder blades up made him hold her back.

“Lacey!”

She turned, and her eyes were unusually bright, gleaming with unshed tears. It was painful to look at, and he wanted to look away.

“Get into the kitchen.”

Her nostrils flared, and a rosy glow crept up her cheeks. He could have said it nicer, he realized, but he, too, was battling his anger. Lacey looked at Helen, who didn’t even try to look as if she wasn’t watching the scene unfolding in front of her. He wanted to spare Lacey at least this witness.

“Don’t you have something to do?” he snarled at the woman, and she snapped to attention. Lacey’s eyes went wide, as if she had not expected this. Then she turned and stalked into the kitchen, where she slumped down onto a chair. He followed her, and fetched a bowl out of a cupboard to prepare her something to eat. When he placed the bowl of cereal in front of her, she looked at him as if she saw him for the first time. Not surprising, given the fact that he’d never done something like this before. But today she was so unsettled, so far from her usual vicious self, that he wanted to know what had happened. And he wanted to know why she had kissed him.

“You have to eat them before they are all soggy. Bae told me that there is only a very small time frame before that starts to happen.” He tried to smile, but it was probably more like an aggressive snarl, a baring of his teeth, and Lacey started to shovel cereal into her mouth as if she hadn’t eaten in ages. Or as if she was afraid of what he might do to her if she didn’t do as she was told. She acted a lot like that lately, as if she waited for him to show the monster he was hiding inside. And yet she still smiled, as if she could chase the monster away with a smile.

She finished her breakfast in next to no time, while he stood there, leaning against the kitchen counter, and watched her.

“So, tell me what happened”, he said, when she put down the spoon.

She pushed back her chair and got to her feet, and the nervous energy that made her fingers twitch, made her claw the hem of her dress, made him nervous, too. He tightened his grip on his cane.

“I went out, I ended up in a bar, I had a drink or two, and Sheriff Swan decided that I was too drunk to go home. If you ask me, that’s pretty deliberate. She could at least have brought me home.”

“She stopped that a year ago, I don’t think she will start again just because you spared her four weeks of your company.” He wondered just how much she had drunken to be so beside herself.

Lacey thrust her hands up and started for the door. Any other day, he would have let her go. But she had kissed him, after he had started to think about kissing her again, after that moment in his study when he wished for nothing more than to feel her, feel her in that sweet, slow way, like they had never done it. And after kissing him, she had gotten herself drunk.

“Wait. Please.”

She didn’t meet his eyes, looked away from him, but she waited. He dared to step closer, only a little bit, not sure if she wouldn’t bolt if he came too close. “What is it you want?” _Why did you kiss me?_ He had asked her the night before, right after her lips left his. He didn’t believe for one second that she didn’t know what she was doing.

She huffed a little, and grimaced. “I want you to see me.”

“But I do see you. Every day. At dinner.”

She laughed, hard and hollow, like she always did when she couldn’t hold back the disgust she felt. “You don’t see me. You stopped seeing your wife a long time ago.” Now she looked at him, and there was something so raw and open in her eyes, that he leant his cane against the counter and crossed the distance between them, slow, holding her gaze to be sure that he was allowed to come this close. She didn’t flinch when he slipped one hand around the nape of her neck, gently pulling her closer, and cupping her tear stained cheek with the other hand. She swayed a little, maybe just as shocked by the contact of skin as he was. She felt so soft, and crumbly where her makeup had stained her skin. He hardly touched her, and yet his palms prickled and his heart stopped, to jump back to a start in his throat. She didn’t let go of his gaze, and when his thumb brushed over her bottom lip, wiping away a little wetness her tongue had left when she licked over it, he could feel her tremble.

“Reuben…”

“I do see you, Lacey. But I’m not sure what I see there. I’m lost.”

She closed her eyes, sank against him, and for a moment he felt her warmth through his suit, through layers and layers of clothing, and he realized that he still wanted her. Still needed her. At some point over the last weeks, he had lost his hatred, had lost his loathing of her. Maybe there was a way out of their forlornness. Maybe they would finally find a way. He wanted to pull her closer, into an embrace that showed them both that there was still hope. But she opened her eyes again, and stepped back. He let his hands fall down to his sides.

“I think I need to shower. I'll see you at dinner.” She left without looking at him again, and it was almost as if she was running away. As if she had to wash him off her skin.

When he came back from work that evening, she looked composed again, as if nothing had happened. As if there had never been a touch, never been a kiss. She read to Bae, she watched cartoons with them, and she brought his son to bed with him, but she avoided his eyes, and after kissing Bae goodnight, she went into her room and closed the door behind her with a finality that knocked his breath out of his lungs. It was as if something misty and grey had engulfed her, wrapped her into a sadness that pierced his bones. He wanted her pain to stop, just as much as he wanted his own turmoil to end. He longed for peace, longed for clarity. Longed for touch. Her touch.

They went back to their routine like it had been before she placed her hand over his when they had watched cartoons with Bae, before the kiss, and before she relapsed. But he was thankful that she didn’t revert completely back, that she continued to treat Bae like a kid, not like a hated reminder of what she had lost. At least Bae was happier this way.

From time to time, Gold watched from his shop when she went to the library, or to Granny’s diner, with that librarian that still owed him a favor, and he found himself longing to hear her when she threw back her head and laughed at something the other woman said. Found himself yearning for her to look at him and see him. But he didn’t realize how much he really craved for her until he saw that other man – Keith Something – talking to her, placing his dirty hands on her, and saw how he grabbed her ass as if he owned her.


	9. In the Shop

It had been a mistake to listen to Lacey and go out. But the thought of going back into the house, after that kiss, and after realizing what she had done – and that she was not entirely unselfish in her actions – she needed some time away. Maybe a bar had not been her best idea. Especially not while wearing her sisters face and in a town where everyone knew her. It had gone well enough, until that creep turned up and started talking to her as if she should know him. Well, she probably should, but Lacey had told her nothing about the people she talked to in bars.

“Are you mad at me? You haven’t called in weeks, and I thought I had to break into your house and see if Goldie Oldie has chained you up in his basement. Lucky me, meeting you up and about in a bar.”

Belle had no idea how to react. “Why would he do that?”

“To keep you from running away, of course. I certainly would…” Belle planted the end of her cue on his foot, and at first she had been even glad to see the blonde woman with the Sheriff badge emerging. That was until she took her to the station and locked her up.

Later, when Reuben had picked her up and took her home, she had been so angry. Not only because he failed to see how unfair it had been to lock her up, but also because he still failed to see that she wasn’t her sister. Lacey had made mistakes, for sure, but she was not alone in this. The biggest part of her fury, however, was directed at herself. Because during that night in the cell, on that uncomfortable cot, she realized that she had started to like Reuben. Like him far too much. She wanted him to heal, and wanted Lacey to heal, and wanted everyone to be happy. But God, she had kissed Reuben not only because she wanted him to heal. She had kissed him because she had wanted to kiss him, and that was the reason why she didn’t tell Lacey. And when he came so close in the kitchen, when he held her and cradled her face like something delicate, she had wanted to kiss him again. Wanted to sink into his arms. But he was Lacey’s husband. And they had enough problems on their own. No need for her to add to that pile of despair.

 She felt bad for her attraction to Reuben. She felt bad for looking at him when he didn’t notice, for taking in every line of his face, for imagining to scratch over that stubble that was on his face in the evenings, and for looking at his hands and imagining to feel them on her skin again. She felt bad for thinking, from time to time, that Reuben and Lacey would be better off without each other. Because she knew that this idea was entirely egoistical.

Bae seemed content to know that Lacey was ok, and Belle was amazed that he didn’t drill her with questions. He just accepted her to be there. And it was not as if they had really a possibility to talk about it, since they never were alone. After that incident with the Sheriff, Helen watched her even closer. And Belle began to long for her time in this house to be over. She wanted to bring enough time and distance between herself and this family that she could forget. Could go on with her own life. Forget that Reuben and Bae existed.

She had two more weeks to go through when that man from the bar approached her again, when she was on her way from the library to Lacey’s car. She thought that she’d made it clear enough that she wasn’t interested, and she repeated it again, but he seized her arm and yanked her to his chest, and he grabbed her behind and squeezed.

“Lacey, baby, we both know that that’s not true”, he murmured into her ear, and Belle planted her heel on his foot and made him jump and curse. But he let go of her, if only for a short moment. Then he seized her arm again, growling.

“Bitch, I know you like it rough, but a simple ‘not now’ would have been enough.”

Belle was spared to answer, because it was exactly this moment that someone took down a cane on her attacker’s arm. He let go of her, backing away, and staring at Reuben, who lifted his cane for another blow. Belle couldn’t even blame the man for the panic he showed, because the snarl of fury on Reuben’s face was terrifying. But when he took the second and third blow with the cane, she didn’t feel sorry for him either. But she didn’t want Reuben to get into trouble, so she seized his arm when he lifted it for another stroke with his cane. The other man was already lying on the ground.

“Reuben, that’s enough. Stop it!”

He turned around, and Belle let go of him and backed away. There was so much rage on his face, and he looked at her as if it was not only directed at the man on the ground, but at her, too. Suddenly she was afraid of him. He must have seen the fear, because he grimaced, and turned again to the man on the ground.

“If I ever see you anywhere around my wife again, pain will be the least of your worries. Understood?”

The man nodded, not daring to look at Reuben, or at her. Reuben turned away, taking her arm and pulling her with him towards the shop. Belle let him, because she wanted to bring as much distance between herself and Lacey’s creep as possible, and despite his fury, she felt safer with Reuben than without him, but when they entered the shop, she yanked her arm out of his grip.

“That was not needed. I got that.”

“Oh, yeah? How? Would you’ve let him fuck you to get rid of him?” His voice dripped with acid, and Belle felt as if he’d punched her, knocked the breath out of her.

“What?”

“Do you think I didn’t hear what he said to you?”

Belle jumped when he lifted his cane again and shattered a glass case with one heavy blow.

“I don’t even know that creep!”

“Oh, don’t lie to me. It wouldn’t be the first time.” He took his cane down on a model of a ship. A sob scratched in Belle’s throat, but she swallowed it down. He was so damn angry, but she realized somewhere deep down that, despite the fact that she had just seen him beat up a man almost twice as big as he himself, he would not hurt her. He took his rage out on objects. Nevertheless did she take a deep breath and told herself to be brave before she stepped closer and grasped his arm.

“Reuben. Stop it. Look at me.”

He let go of the cane and it clattered to the ground, but he didn’t look at her until she cupped his cheek and made him. There was so much pain etched into his face. So much anguish and fear. He was panting heavily, and Belle stepped even closer and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him into a soothing hug. She heard him swallow, felt him shudder, before he put his arms around her, very carefully. His hands landed just below her shoulder blades, tentative, as if he was not sure if he was allowed to return her embrace.

“I’m sorry”, he choked out. “I didn’t want to scare you.”

“It’s ok.” Belle stroked through his hair, playing with strands of it, and inhaled his scent. She wanted to remember it, for now, until she needed to forget.

“I didn’t mean what I said.” He sounded almost like a boy, hoping he could make her forget all the ugly things if he said sorry.

“I know.” She pulled back, and he instantly let go of her. “And I did lie. I was glad you came, because I was really scared of that guy.” She smiled at him, a little timid maybe, and he returned it just as insecure.

“Let’s clean this up, shall we?” she asked, pointing her chin to the mess of glass shards and broken wood he had created, and he grimaced and nodded. She followed him to the backroom, trying not to betray that she didn’t know her way around his shop. He didn’t notice. She found a broom leaning against a shelf, but when she reached for it, Reuben stepped behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders, hardly touching her, as if he still was not sure if he was even allowed to touch her.

“It can wait for another moment, dear. I’d like to ask you something.”

She wanted to turn around, but his grip tightened and hindered her from doing so.

“What is it?” She turned her head, at least, and he was so close that her hair brushed his face.

“Do you think that it’s possible for us… to go back? To forget?” It was only a whisper, hoarse, as if he had to push it around a lump.

“I hope so.” And she did. She hoped she would forget. She hoped he and Lacey would find a way back to each other. He let his forehead sink against her shoulder and drew in a shuddering breath.

“Can we just have this moment for now? Just…once?”

Belle grasped the shelf in front of her for support, as her world started spinning. She wanted this moment. She wanted to live it, feel it with every fiber, so she could hold on to it later, when she had to leave him again. For just one moment, she wanted to be purely egoistical. “Yes”, she whispered, and her breath hitched in her throat when he exhaled with a sigh, as if he had not dared to breathe in ages, and let his hand slide along her arm, to cover her hand with his, lacing his fingers with hers.

“Tell me if you want me to stop, ok?” He whispered into her ear, and his breath sent a shiver over her skin. She nodded. Still he hardly touched her, as if he was afraid of breaking her, when he brushed her hair aside and kissed that sensitive spot just below her earlobe, where her pulse throbbed. Belle let her head fall to the side, to grant him better access, to feel more of him, and he stepped even closer, pressing his chest against her back. She felt his warmth, felt his breath moving his chest and gusting over her neck, and the tight knot that she had carried in the pit of her stomach for weeks slowly dissolved, unraveled by his tenderness, and his warmth. She squeezed his fingers, still intertwined with hers, and let herself fall back against him, trying to feel as much of him as she could with her whole body. He placed his free hand on her waist, spread out his fingers over her stomach, and Belle sucked in her belly. Heat spread from where he touched her, trickling slow like honey into her limbs and making her knees weak. She sighed, and he pressed his lips to the crook of her neck and drew in a breath that was almost a sob.

When his hand slid down to the hem of Lacey’s much too tight dress, and he started to pull it up, gradually, she tensed, only for a heartbeat, and he stilled his hand, painting small circles with his fingertips on her thigh.

“Shall I stop?” he asked, without leaving her skin with his lips, and his voice vibrated over her. She felt the tips of her breast puckering with the sound of his voice, with his hot breath on her skin, and she was barely able to talk with her insides syncopating to his soft hum. She didn’t want him to stop, wanted this moment to last, didn’t want to think about Lacey, or the fact that she was wearing Lacey’s dress, and the man holding her was not only Lacey’s husband but also thinking he was holding Lacey in his arms. If she started to think about the wrongness of it all, she would break, and would wish she didn’t exist.

“Don’t stop”, she whispered, and he groaned and rocked gently against her backside. Little by little, he pulled her dress up her thighs, and Belle stepped a little farther apart to let him cup her sex when he reached the juncture of her legs. He rubbed the heel of his hand against her, gently, and tickled her entrance though her panties. Belle twitched, met his caress, and gulped in air when he increased the pressure. When her hips jerked, he pressed himself harder to her back, tighter, and his breath condensed hot and humid on the crook of neck. His lips didn’t leave that spot, nibbling and sucking at her, and Belle turned her face to press it against his forehead. She could feel him hard against the small of her back, and she moved her hips to increase the pressure, for him as well as for her. Reuben groaned when he wriggled his fingers into her panties and found her wet and slippery. His fingers sent tingles and tickles through her, and white-hot heat built up between her pelvic bones. She bent forward in her need to get closer to that heat, to enclose it with her body, to hold it and keep it there. She gasped, and he hummed into her ear, soothing her with his voice.

“Shhh, sweetheart. Let me do this for you, please…” He wetted his fingertips by dipping into her before circling her clit, and Belle bucked her hips back against him. He panted against her neck, wetting her skin with his breath, and Belle shivered and shook, wanted to get closer to him and closer to the stars. He let go of her hand still grasping the shelf and wrapped his arm around her waist, pressing her closer to him and himself closer to her. Belle felt him rubbing himself against her, rocking against her, and when he held her clit, pressing his fingers so tenderly against the sides of it, she clenched her insides, pressed herself to his fingertips.

“There it is, darling. There”, he murmured, as she came undone with a deep groan and a sob. She felt him tense behind her, felt something warm and wet at the small of her back when his seed started to seep through the fabric of his pants. Still he held her pressed to his chest, and when he took his hand away from her sex, he was careful not to hurt her. He brushed her damp hair away from her neck with a hand that smelled of her and was sticky from her juices, and kissed her skin, lapped at the damp spot his fingertips and his mouth had left on her. Belle didn’t want him to let go of her, didn’t want to face the reality of what had just happened. Didn’t want to face what she had just done to this man.

“Hold me just a little longer?” she asked, and he leant his forehead against her neck and nodded.

“Will you regret this?” he asked, and Belle had to bite her lips to keep herself from sobbing. She already did.

“I don’t know.” Maybe she would have been able to tell him the truth before this had happened. Now it was impossible. If she told him now, he would hate her, just as much as he hated Lacey. And Lacey…She had to tell her sister eventually. Lacey had to know what awaited her.

“I think I need to go to the bathroom, sweetheart”, he said after a while, and Belle nodded. He tried to hide the damp spot on the front of his pants from her eyes when he stepped away, and Belle averted her eyes. Why did reality have to be so messy and dirty and wrong? Because she knew with absolute clarity that her resolve to stay away from him had just crumbled, dissolved when he stepped away and she realized that she already missed his arms around her. She wouldn’t be able to refuse him if he asked her for another moment. She wouldn’t be able to deny herself this, deny herself another moment of closeness. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t close her eyes to the fact that she walked the road to disaster. And it was not only her own heart on the line. It was his, already bruised and broken too often, and Lacey’s heart, too fragile for this world. And instead of helping anyone, she just made everything worse.

After a while, Reuben came back, wearing a different suit, and he halted in the doorway that joined backroom and salesroom and watched her as if he tried to find out if she was ok, if she was already regretting, just by looking at her. And Belle bit back the tears, ignored the pain piercing her sides, and smiled at him.   


	10. At Home

He was not sure what would await him at home. She had left his shop and gone home, left him behind, and they both had silently agreed not to talk about what had happened between them. When he entered his home, she was sitting in the living room with Bae, reading (the third book by now), closely watched by Helen. For a moment, he just stood in the doorway to the living room and looked at her, followed the streak of light that illuminated a strand of her hair that had fallen out of the bird’s nest she called a hairdo, and his fingertips itched with the desire to tuck it behind the shell of her ear again, and then follow the line of her neck down to her collarbones, trail over her skin… When she looked up from the book and their eyes met, a smile flitted over her face, and he wanted to kiss it from her lips, wanted to pull her back into his arms and keep her there. But they were not there yet. Maybe that moment in the shop didn’t change anything.

He nodded at Helen, and pointed his chin to the kitchen, gesturing for her to follow him.

“Maybe it’s time to trust her. Give her some time to be alone in the same room with Bae.”

Helen looked as if he had lost his mind, and she could very well be right.

“But…”

“This is my decision, isn’t it?”

The housekeeper gave in, at last, but Reuben wondered if he was too gullible. Wondered if a few weeks could really make that much of a difference.

She didn’t look at him over dinner, and was careful to keep Bae between them at all times when they were in his bedroom to watch cartoons. If anything, she seemed to be even sadder now, and it twisted the knife in his chest to look at her. He didn’t hold her back when she went into her room after saying goodnight to Bae.

When he came home from the shop the following day, she was reading to Bae again, but Helen was not with them. He watched her from the door again, and she seemed so much happier that day, as if a weight had been lifted from her. It almost broke his heart to see the adoration in Bae’s eyes, and the affection in hers. She tucked one of Bae’s unruly curls behind his ear, just as he had wanted to do it with her the day before, so tender and gentle that he knew it had been the right thing to do to call off her watchdog. Then she saw him standing there, and the smile slipped off her face, leaving behind confusion and wonder. After dinner, and after bringing Bae to bed with him, she called him, just as he wanted to go down the stairs and spent another lonely evening in his study.

“Reuben.”

He halted, one hand on the wooden banister, trying to hide the tremors running through him. “Yes, dear?”

She came closer, and placed her hand over his, and she smiled a shy, insecure smile. “I wanted to thank you”, she said.

“What for?”

“You know it. For calling off Helen. For trusting me. I know that this is a big step for you.” She didn’t meet his eyes, looked down at his hand, and when he turned his palm upwards and laced his fingers with hers, she squeezed back, hesitantly, as if she was not sure if it was the right thing to do.

“No matter, dear.” He had no idea what else to say, how to proceed. But he wanted her to look at him, so he placed his fingertips beneath her chin and tilted her head up. She blushed, and he felt the heat her skin radiated, making his flesh tingle and his breath become shallow. He pulled back his hand.

“Have a good night. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He wanted to let go of her hand, but she tightened her grip and held him back.

“Maybe we could…spend the evening together?” She sounded so timid. As if she was not sure if it was a good idea to suggest such a thing. Well, it certainly was not.

“I’d like that”, he said, and her face lit up in a smile that left him breathless.

They settled on the couch, reading in tentative quiet, and after a while, she pulled up her feet and placed them on the couch right next to him. He was almost sure that she was reading just as little as he was. He pretended to be immersed in his book, when in truth, he peered at her out of the corner of his eyes, watched as she tried so hard to look concentrated, watched as she bit her lip, and licked her fingertip before turning the page…and after a while, she turned the page back and started again. He did the same.

She was the first to stop pretending. Letting her book sink down to her lap, she looked at him, until he, too, let the book sink down. Slowly, as if she was afraid he would kick her off the couch, she placed her feet on his lap, one after the other, and wriggled her toes. He could see her painted nails through the sheer fabric of her pantyhose. When he placed his hand on the arch of her foot and started to rub her sole with his thumb, she sucked in air, a sweet sound that shot through his veins like adrenaline. They remained like that, in silence, and his heart was beating painfully inside his chest. She closed her eyes and let her head sink to the side, resting against the back of the couch, and he imagined to see a tear glitter in her dark eyelashes. She was beautiful, so different and yet the same, and his heart ached for the pain she felt.

They went upstairs together, later, and he wanted to say goodnight to her when they reached the door of her room. She took his hand and kissed him, and he tasted salt in their kiss.

“We don’t have to do this, sweetheart”, he rasped, barely able to speak, but she snuffled, and tugged him closer.

“Can’t we have just another moment?” she asked, and he slipped his hand around the back of her head and pulled her in for another kiss. He kissed every inch of her after they fell into his bed, kissed and licked and sucked and bit until she came undone, and kissed his way back up to her lips, lingering at the fine line above the nest of curls between her legs, before he entered her, slow, gentle, giving her time to adjust. She felt like heaven, silken and hot, and he went as slow as he was able to, delaying each thrust until she clawed her hands into his backside and sobbed in need, until she clenched around him and arched against him and he couldn’t hold off his own climax any longer. Afterwards, he held her and kissed away the tears that wetted her cheeks.

“Shhh. It’s alright, sweetheart. It’s alright.” He hummed and crooned and rocked her gently until she drifted off to sleep.

Sleep was the last thing he could think of.

They found a new routine then, spending time together after they brought Bae to bed, and then spending the night together for just another moment. They didn’t find words to talk about what it was that had started between them, what bond had formed itself and tied them together.

They started to leave the house together in the mornings, dropping Bae off at school and her at the library. Then she started to come to the shop after she was finished at the library, and they ate lunch together.

“We don’t have to do this, darling”, he said, when she started kissing him in the back of his shop.

“I know. It’s just for another moment.”

He pressed her with her back to the wall and slipped his hand around her throat before he kissed her, wanting to feel the flutter of her pulse and her breath under his palm, wanting to feel her life in his hands just as his was in hers as she ripped open his pants and closed her hand around his hard member, pumping until his hips jerked and he crushed her with his body, pressing himself against her until she groaned. His knee screamed in pain when he wrapped her legs around his waist and took her against the wall, but he didn’t care. He loved her with abandon, gave her everything he had to give, his soul and body, and she took it all.

Every time felt like the last time.

Then she didn’t come for lunch, and when he called her, she didn’t pick up the phone. His stomach twisted, clenched into knots, and he felt as if he had held his breath for hours when he finally came home in the evening. Bae was in the kitchen with Helen, reading for himself.

“Hey.” Reuben said, and Bae looked up and tilted his head.

“Mama is upstairs”, he said.

Reuben went up the stairs, his legs feeling as if they were made of lead, and knocked at the door to her room.

“Hey, sweet – “, he started, but she opened the door and everything he wanted to say got stuck in his throat. She stared at him, her eyes flying from his face to his feet and back, and a smirk crept over her face.

“I’m not who you expected to see, am I?”

There she was, Lacey, shattering his life with the biggest lie of all.       


	11. Away

Lacey felt bad for sending Belle into her own personal hell without so much as a warning. Belle had always been the stronger one, the one to stand up and fight, and hope beyond hope, while Lacey was the one to sneak out through the backdoor and hide until the worst was over. Belle always stood up for her, no matter if it was when their father needed her to take the blame for one of their pranks, or when she was sent to the principal’s office because she had been caught doing something forbidden. When she was fourteen, she carried a pet rat around in the inside pocket of her jacket, or let it sit in her sleeves, and Belle had to keep their dad from killing it when he found it. She still missed Rumple sometimes, because nothing was as unconditional as the love of a pet.

Of course, Belle’s love was. Belle loved her and was always there to rescue her, or to protect her. She had done almost all of Lacey’s break-ups for her, pretending to be Lacey. Belle knew how to talk, and knew how to say what she wanted. Belle was brave. Lacey was not, and when she cut herself off from her family, it was because she wanted to prove to herself that she was her own person. That she was strong and could function on her own. That she didn’t need Belle to get her out of trouble.

Well, that didn’t work out.

And now she felt bad for sending Belle into her marriage, to take her place, because she needed her to do what she couldn’t do. Belle had this magic superpower that made people fall in love with her, and maybe Reuben would stop hating her. It was cruel to Belle. They always had kind of the same type when it came to men, a penchant for outsiders, for difficult men who hid their gentleness beneath layers of bad boy behavior. Lacey knew that it would be hard for Belle not to fall for Reuben. And who wouldn’t fall for him?

She only hoped that Belle would forgive her. She needed her, needed her to do the steps she couldn’t do, to go back to Reuben. Belle was brave, and Belle would manage to do what she couldn’t do. Get out of that cage they had built. She needed Belle to show Reuben that he wasn’t as bad as he thought to be. Maybe, if Belle managed to do the first step, and Reuben stopped hating her, she even could forgive herself, and him. And forget that wretched night when he had found out about her lie. When he found out that she didn’t know if the baby really was his, because she practically stumbled out of another man’s arms into his. That the reason they married stood on rotten feet. She was still unable to look at that memory, look at the moment his world had shattered, and he had grabbed and shaken her, because he was convinced that she had never loved him. Maybe it really had been the reason why she lost Isobel. Why they had to cut her baby out of her. Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe it was never meant to be. He didn’t dare to touch her after that, and she didn’t want him to. Because deep down, she blamed him. Blamed him, because she couldn’t help but suspect that he was relieved that the baby was gone. And she hated him for it.

She needed the time away to realize that his coldness, his fear of touching her, his hatred, was not due to her betrayal. Not entirely, at least. He hated himself more than he hated her. He was horrified of what he’d done to her. What he believed to have done. Of course, she added to that when she, in a fit of madness, grabbed the boy and did to him what Reuben had done to her. She suspected that all the means of control Reuben put into place after that were signs of his distrust in her as well as in himself. It was a tight cage they had built. And despite it all, neither of them could let go.

When she called Belle to tell her that she was back, she felt her sister’s heart breaking as if it was her own. And when she met Belle in that diner where they had switched places six weeks ago, and saw the devastated look on Belle’s face, she understood for the first time what she had really done. In her attempt to fix her own life, she had ruined Belle’s.

“What happened?” she asked, croaking like a toad with a cold.

“I’m so sorry, Lacey. I’m so, so sorry. It never was my intention to do…that…” Belle could hardly hold back her tears, and Lacey wondered what exactly _that_ was. “But why did you want me here? Why couldn’t you just talk it out with your husband?”

“I’m sorry…You know me. I never was brave enough for those things. We were so stuck and he hated me and I hated him and I just wanted to break free and go back…” Lacey realized that she didn’t make sense. That she talked in circles. But Belle understood her nevertheless. She understood Lacey better than Lacey understood herself. “I needed you to save me. You are so brave, and I knew that you would find a way out of my misery…”

“Oh Lacey. I was never brave without you. I was always brave for you because I needed you. Without you, I’m just…lost. Small.” Belle wiped the tears from her face, and Lacey took her hand.

“So, what happened? Did you fall in love with Reuben?”

Belle made a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “Are you mad at me now?”

“No. I’m sorry. I didn’t want that to happen to you.”

“Do you love him?”

“I do.” Lacey looked down at Belle’s hand in hers. “I needed some time away from him to see past the pain and the hurt.”

“What about that creep I met at the bar?”

“You were in a bar?” Of course Lacey knew whom Belle meant. She had only one creep. “That was a one-time thing. I was drunk and lonely and seriously underfucked…”

“Oh Lacey. Reuben was there the whole time. All it took was a little friendliness.”

“I had no friendliness left.” They looked both down at their clasped hands, and Lacey wondered if she had not broken more than she ever could repair. If it wasn’t too late for her to go back now.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked, and Belle sighed.

“Go back home, I think. I need some time to recuperate after this. Just promise me that you don’t break his heart. Or Bae’s. You have to read to Bae, he likes that. And be kind.”

“I’m not good with kids…”

“Then read a book. Or call me. And take a deep breath and count to ten before you do anything rash.”

Lacey chuckled, and Belle smiled, crooked and sad, but she smiled. “You know I don’t read.”

“You should.” Belle squeezed her hand again. “And I want you to call me often. No more years between calls, alright?”

“You know that I can never introduce you to Reuben, right?” If he ever should find out about this, then Lacey would probably wish she had been content with the hell she had before.

“We’ll see. First you have to go back.”

“Is there anything I should know for that?” Lacey asked, and Belle shook her head.

“No. You’ll manage.”

When Lacey watched Belle drive away in her rusty old car, she was sure that her sister had just, for the first time in her life, lied to her. But she didn’t understand until she opened the door of her room to face Reuben, and saw how the hope fell from his face, saw how he recognized her, and she had only a moment to realize that every attempt at holding up her charade would be futile. She tried to smile, like Belle would do it, face him brave and calm, but every smile fashioned into a grimace with her.

“I’m not who you expected to see, am I?” she asked, and he stumbled back, as if she had punched him.

“Lacey”, he choked out, and he sounded broken. She grasped his arm, afraid he would collapse, and pulled him into her room, pushed him down onto her bed.

“Where is she?” he rasped out, staring at her as if she was a ghost.

“She’s gone. She’s not coming back.”

“How could you do this to me?”

Lacey had no answer to that. Even if she somehow wasn’t surprised at Belle falling for Reuben, she had not expected him to…to see.

“I needed her…” It wasn’t an explanation at all, and he clenched his jaws and stared at her with eyes narrowed to slits.

“She said that I stopped seeing you a long time ago. But you made me see, Lacey. I see you now.”

There was disgust in his voice, and Lacey fell down to her knees at his side and grabbed his thighs. She forgot that she had not touched him in two years, forgot all the hate that piled up between them, even forgot what had driven them apart.

“Reuben…”

He pushed her away.

Lacey could hardly breathe. “How did you know?” she asked after a while, after he just stared at the ground, opening and closing his hands around the handle of his cane. He didn’t look up.

“She didn’t remember…didn’t know what I did to you. She never flinched when I touched her. And after I beat up that worthless piece of shit that you let between your legs, and started smashing things in the shop, she didn’t back away. She touched me.” He looked up, and his cane clattered to the floor when he grabbed her with both hands, grabbed her jaw, dug his fingers into the back of her skull and pulled her close. Lacey flinched, unable to swallow, unable to look away.

“She didn’t have a scar”, he hissed, and Lacey went limp in his grip, closed her eyes and relaxed against his chest.

“So you slept with her. Even after you knew she wasn’t me.”

He let go of her as if he had burned himself.

“You shouldn’t hold that against me.”

“I don’t. I made mistakes, too.”

“Why did you do that, Lacey?” He was so hoarse that she barely heard him.

“I wanted back and didn’t know how. I wanted to change my life.”

“By pushing me into the arms of another woman? I don’t even know her name.”

Lacey sank back on her heels, and wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s Isobel. Belle. She’s my older sister.”

“You didn’t even tell me that you have a sister. I didn’t even know that much about you. Did you ever tell me anything that was the truth at all?”

“Yes. I loved you.”

“Well, dearie, you have a peculiar way of showing it.” He rose, slow, like an old man. Utterly destroyed. Lacey picked up his cane and extended it to him, and he took it without looking at her.

“What are we going to do now?” she asked, holding on to the end of his cane.

“I don’t know. I wanted you to be happy for so long. I wanted you to get over the pain and the loss and I wanted you to be whole again. But everything comes at a price, doesn’t it?” He yanked his cane out of her grip and started for the door. Lacey didn’t hold him back.

She looked around the room, and for the first time she saw how little of her was left. She had left this house and this family long ago. And now, when she finally was ready to go back, there was nothing left to go back to. She started to pack the suitcase she had just unpacked again. Maybe it was wrong to run away again, but Reuben would never forgive her. And how could he? This time she had been really thorough in destroying everything. He could never love her again, because she wasn’t Belle.

And Belle…her sister would never fight her for a man, because Lacey meant more to her than any man ever could. No, she would stand back and hope for Lacey to find happiness. Even if it broke her heart. She didn’t know that she meant just as much to Lacey.

After packing, she sank down on her bed and stared at her phone. It took her a while to gather her courage, or at least what little courage she had. Belle picked up after the third ring, but this time she didn’t screech. She sounded as if she had a cold. As if she had cried for hours.

“Hey, Lacey.”

“Remember that you told me not to break his heart?”

“What happened?”

Lacey inhaled deeply and rubbed her forehead. “I think he needs you to pick up the pieces. Can you come back?”

Belle let out a breathless sob, and something clanked against the phone. Lacey wondered if Belle had hit it against the steering wheel of her car or something.

“Lacey, I can’t.”

“Why not? He loves you. He didn’t say it, but I know it. And you love him, too. So come back.”

“Lacey, I’m getting married in two months.”

The phone slipped out of her grip and clattered to the ground, but Lacey was not able to pick it up at once. When she did, Belle was no longer there, and when Lacey tried to call her again, she didn’t pick up. Lacey stared at her packed suitcase and wondered what she should do now. She had always been the one to break things. Never one to pick up the pieces.    


	12. The Greenhouse

Belle managed not to think until she reached home. She hated the feeling of coming into an abandoned apartment, a place where no one had been for six weeks. The air was a little stale, and when she let her bag fall to the wooden floorboards in her tiny living room, dust swirled up and made her cough. It was strange. Felt so wrong. Her post was piling up on the floor behind her entrance door, and Belle skimmed through it with a sigh. Apart from a few postcards from Jefferson, there was nothing of importance. He was so old fashioned. But then, she was too, and she sorted his postcards out to pin them to the others on the wall behind her kitchen table. Most of them had butterflies on them, or teacups, or strangely enough, hats. Jefferson loved the Brits for their hats, and he visited Ascot regularly just to marvel over those ridiculous hats.

After pinning the postcards to the wall, she checked the automatic watering of her orchids. Her plants didn’t look as if they’d missed her, and she sighed again. She wondered if anyone would notice if she disappeared. No one had noticed when Lacey dwindled away and became a shadow of herself. She shoved the thought back again, not wanting to think about Lacey, or Bae, or Reuben. Especially not Reuben. She didn’t want to think about what Lacey meant when she said that his heart was broken. Did it mean that he had noticed when they switched back? Did it mean he knew? Her insides lurched at the thought, and she pressed her palms to her ribcage to soothe the stitching in her sides. She didn’t want to think about the possibility of him knowing. Knowing that he had spent the last few weeks not with his wife. Knowing that she had lied to him. Had made him cheat on his wife. She couldn’t face the possibility of that. It was worse than facing the fact that she had also cheated on her fiancé. For her time playing Lacey, she had tucked Jefferson neatly away to the back of her mind. He was in the UK, and even if he should find out, someday, Belle doubted that it would give him any sleepless nights. No, as old fashioned as he was, faithfulness was, in his eyes, a hopelessly outdated concept. He was infuriatingly philistine in his open-mindedness (and his disgust for ordinary people and their bourgeois way of life didn’t keep him from proposing to her, although she still didn’t know why exactly and just took it as a proof that he really loved her).

“All those ordinary people who cling to their narrow-minded beliefs and don’t see the beauty of life and freedom…” No, Jefferson would probably have much less problems with her infidelity than she herself had. Nevertheless, she was glad that he would be away for another two weeks. That gave her time to settle back into her life. She had not expected to feel so different when she came back.

She went to the flower shop the following day, checking her glasshouse and her orchids there, and telling her father that she was back.

“How was your vacation? You didn’t even send a postcard!”

“That’s Jefferson’s thing, dad, you know that.”

“Yes, yes.” But half an hour later he repeated his question again, and Belle sighed. She had to go through the shop and find all the things he had misplaced while she was away, had to go through the paperwork and sort out what he had messed up, and with every hour she spent in the shop, the weight of her sorrows settled heavier on her shoulders. She was always taking care of everyone. Even Jefferson, though on the other side of the ocean, relied on her to take care of his affairs. And her father…well, better not let him live on his own for too long. It took Belle a few days to realize that, although it had been tense and upsetting in many ways, she had actually enjoyed her stay with Lacey’s family. And she realized that even if Lacey really took care of their father’s debts, he would be just as unable to be on his own as he was now. When she came home into her empty apartment that night, she had to shove a stack of books down from the couch before she could fall down on it to cry.

She hated it to be weak, hated it to break. Hated it that she wasn’t able to escape the thoughts of Reuben pressing in on her. She missed him. Missed to feel his arms around her. And he…well, he probably hated her. If he knew about her. She didn’t want to call Lacey, though, and when her sister called her, she didn’t pick up. She didn’t pick up either when Jefferson called, because she would certainly break down in earnest then, telling him everything that had happened…and he wouldn’t even listen. Jefferson lived in his own world, and while Belle stared at his number in the display of her phone, she wondered if she still wanted to marry him. But although they lived most of the time on different continents, they had a great relationship. A stable one. One that didn’t ground on silly expectations. One that allowed them to carry responsibility for themselves. Well, it allowed Belle to bear the responsibility for both of them.

She pulled herself together. Told herself that everything was fine. And she almost believed it.

That was until she got the parcel with the book. There was no card in it, no letter, not even a sender on the outside. It was just the book. When Belle unwrapped it, it slipped out of her hands and to the ground, because she remembered the moment in the study, when she had placed her hand on Reuben’s on the book, remembered with a pang the electricity biting through her with the touch from skin on skin. She stared at it, lying on the ground, and when she picked it up, she pressed it to her chest and tried to remember the moment, tried to feel his almost-touch again, trembled with the memory of the longing, the yearning to cross the distance…and not quite managing it. She could hardly breathe. “Rilke”, she choked out, past the tears blocking her throat, and the memory of Reuben’s fingertips on her whispered over her skin like a ghost. She didn’t want to think about the meaning of his book in her hands.

The next day, Jefferson came home, and Belle had to face the reality of her own relationship.

“Hey, how was your vacation?” he asked, shaking off his shoes and causing a stack of books beside the entrance door to topple over.

“It was…interesting.” Belle picked the books up and piled them back up, and thought that it was about time she bought herself a bookcase, or twelve, since almost every space available in her tiny flat was occupied by books. Stacks of books lined the walls of her microscopic hallway, and the couch table in the living room (she had actually forgotten the color of the tabletop, but she thought it was red), and the walls…She contemplated to build bookcases out of books. That wouldn’t help her problem, though. She wondered what Reuben would say about her chaos (well, more a galaxy) of books, before she remembered not to think about him.

Jefferson didn’t ask further, and instead started to tell her everything about the obnoxious lady that had occupied the seat beside him in the plane, but Belle stopped listening after a while and stared at Reuben’s book on her kitchen table in front of her, painted little circles with her fingertips on the cover, and she didn’t realize when Jefferson stopped talking and slumped down onto the chair beside her, not until he grasped her legs around her knees and pulled them between his own, pulling her closer.

“You are miles away. Wanna talk about it?”

Belle couldn’t even look at him. “No. I’m just tired. Let’s go to bed, alright?”

It was not like her to run from a confrontation, to run from fighting for herself, or others. But she didn’t know what she wanted, and the feeling of standing at the edge of a pit, circling a black hole that held something she desperately needed, without knowing what it was, drove her insane. For the first time, Belle wanted to run, as far as she could, without ever looking back. But she knew that her problems would close in on her, eventually.

And they did.

She was potting orchids in her greenhouse when she heard the soft thud of a cane, and a tentative knock against a glass panel of the open door. She didn’t turn around, not immediately. Instead, she put down the root ball she was preparing for potting, carefully, and wiped the crumbly soil from her palms. Her heart raced, and she tried to still the trembling of her hands.

“Belle.”

It was the first time he called her with her name, and the sound of it, soft and deep, fluttered over her skin and through her belly like humming birds. She inhaled before she turned, and the humid air of her greenhouse felt like a damp blanket wrapping itself around her lungs, choking her.

“Hey, Reuben.”

There was a tiny smile on his face, almost invisible, more a squinting of his eyes and a twitching of his lips. It was the only sign he gave off that he was happy to see her.

“Come in”, she said, and he stepped into the greenhouse. He would soon start to sweat, she knew, because wearing a suit in a greenhouse was not the best idea. But Belle reigned herself in. It was not her place to worry about him and his comfort. “How are you?” she asked, and he frowned.

“What do you think?”

“I try very hard not to think. Why are you here?”

“We didn’t have a chance to say goodbye. You were just gone.”

Belle grabbed the edge of her planting table behind her and leant against it. She felt as if he’d pricked her with a needle and all the air inside her was zooming out of her. “Are you saying you knew I wasn’t Lacey?”

“I did.” He wanted to step closer, but Belle lifted her hand and gestured for him to stop. He halted, watching her with his head cocked to the side.

“When? When did you realize?”

“In the shop…after I beat up Keith…”

“So when you asked me if it’s possible for us to go back, you didn’t talk about you and Lacey? You meant you and me?”

“Belle…”

“So you knew I wasn’t your wife, and still you slept with me?” She couldn’t keep her voice from getting shrill. She had tormented herself, blamed herself for doing something to him, for making him cheat on Lacey without him even realizing it, when in truth, he had known it from the very first time they touched each other like that…

“Well, it’s not as if _you_ hadn’t known that you weren’t my wife either…”

She had to turn away, couldn’t look at him any longer. She almost didn’t hear him over the sound of her ragged breathing when he came closer, and she flinched when he placed a hand on her shoulder.

“Please, look at me.”

“Where’s Lacey?” Belle wiped the wetness from her cheek, not wanting to let him see how upset she was.

“She said you don’t want to talk to her. She said you don’t pick up the phone. She said you’re getting married in a month.” His hand on her shoulder tensed with the last words, and Belle turned her face away.

“Where’s Lacey?”

“We separated.”

Now she turned to him, and took his hand from her shoulder and held it between her soiled and dirty ones. “But you love her. Why couldn’t you just talk it out?”

“Lacey and I bring out the worst in each other. And the fact that she could switch places with her twin sister without me noticing tells a lot about the state of affairs, I’d say. You were right, I stopped seeing her a long time ago.”

“But you see her now. There’s still hope.”

“Belle, it’s not only that we bring out the worst in each other. I want her to be happy, and sane, but maybe that’s not a possibility with me.” He squeezed her hands, and Belle looked down, hoping he didn’t see the tears in her eyes. Her heart ached for Lacey, and for him. He made himself into a monster, and convinced himself that no one could possibly be happy with him. He thought it was love to spare Lacey a life with him. And Lacey loved him, too. Why couldn’t they just be happy?

“So, why are you really here, Reuben? What do you want?”

“I wanted to ask you a question. Well, two questions, actually.” He pulled his hand out of her grip and wiped his thumb over her cheek, making her look at him. She had probably soiled her face earlier, when she wiped away her tears. “Do you think it’s possible for us to go back and forget?”

“Forget what? And go back where?”

He smiled, sadly, and pulled back his hand. The loss of contact felt as if something was ripping her apart, pulled at the frail seams where she had so carefully stitched herself together, but Belle bit down on the insides of her cheeks and pushed back the pain.

“Forget what we’ve done to each other, forget the lies and the deception. Go back to being just two people.”

“What is the other question?”

He met her eyes, and his turmoil etched itself in the lines of his face, made him look as if he was in pain. He needed several starts to get out his other question. “Are you happy?”

 _Was she_? She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and counted silently to ten.   


	13. On Soil and Broken Flowers

She stood there, basked in the light that fell through the glass panels overhead, and looked like a vision from another world. The light on her skin glowed like honey, warm and golden, and Reuben wanted to follow those golden trails, wanted to kiss away the spots of sunlight and the dots of color reflected by the wind chimes of colored glass that she had hung up between the shelves with plants. It was a magical place, and a magical moment, and he didn’t dare to breathe while he waited for her to answer.

Was she happy?

If she was, then he would go, would leave her to live in peace and happiness. He just wanted for her to be happy. God knew, the time she had spent in his house had not been a happy time.

“Belle…If you tell me to go, then I will go.“

She opened her eyes, clawing her fingers into the front of her apron. “I don’t even know what it is you want of me, Reuben.”

“Just tell me that you’re happy with your life, and I will go and leave you to it.” He had to loosen the knot of his tie, because the heat in her greenhouse started to suffocate him. He noticed her gaze on his throat, on his tie, and when she raised a brow, he knew that she noticed his discomfort. She was dressed much more suitable for the humidity and heat, wearing only shorts and a shirt beneath her apron. His skin started to itch. And she was stalling.

“And if I’m not? If I can’t stop to think about that time I spent with a man who thought I was my sister? His wife? Oh wait, you knew I wasn’t. For a man who hates to be lied to, you have some serious issues with honesty.” She turned away and started to grab handfuls of soil from a heap on her planting table and stuffed it between the roots of orchids waiting to be potted. Her movements were erratic, and he suspected that she usually was much more gentle with her plants.

“Are you reproaching me for not telling you that I found out about _your_ lie?” He stepped to the side of her planting table, bringing a little distance between them. He didn’t want her to feel pressed.

She put down the root ball in her hands and wiped the back of her hand over her forehead, leaving a streak of dirt on her skin there. “I guess I am. It broke my heart to think about the things I was doing to you. To think that I made you cheat on the woman you loved without even realizing it. It broke my heart to know that it would destroy you if you ever found out. And still I couldn’t stop. What does that tell you about me?”

“What does it tell you about me that I knew that the woman in my arms was not my wife, and still I couldn’t stop either?”

“It was wrong, Reuben. It was wrong.”

“And we both knew it.”

“That doesn’t make it better.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and left another streak of dirt on her face.

“So, do you want me to go?” Again he held his breath waiting for her answer, ignoring the itch on his skin and the pool of sweat forming at the small of his back and between his shoulder blades. He loosened the knot of his tie a little more.

“I don’t know if we can go back to being just two people, Reuben. I don’t know if we can forget. Could you forget that I lied to you? Forgive? Or would you only see the woman in me that deceived you?”

“You were helping your sister. Could you forget that I was her husband? Forget what I did to her?”

“Maybe we shouldn’t forget those things. Maybe we should keep them in mind and let them remind us that…” She trailed off, and Reuben wanted to go to her, touch her, keep her somehow from breaking. He tightened the grip on his cane, and the metal handle grew slippery with the sweat from his palms.

“Remind us of what, Belle?” he asked.

“That love can take root in the darkest and most unlikely places. That it can wrap its roots around you and tie you to a place where you never thought you’d find yourself in. To a person you never thought you could love.”

She didn’t look at him, and he stared at her, at her bent neck, where flicks of her hair, fallen out of her messy bun, stuck to her damp skin. Still she hadn’t answered his question. Was she happy?

“Do you want me to go?” he asked again, and she grimaced and let her head fall back.

“No Reuben, I don’t want you to go. I thought I’m in love with Jefferson, and I thought I could forget you and go on with my life and marry him, but then I came back, and he…I realized that I had stopped seeing him. All I could think about was you. But that’s not a reason to break up a good relationship. A fling comes and goes. Someday I would forget you, and a few weeks with you are not enough to cast away five years with someone else. I couldn’t do that to him.”

“Does he still see you?”

She drew a shuddering breath, and buried her hands in the heap of soil before her. He wondered if it helped her to remain grounded.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, there is an easy way to find out.” He took out his phone, dialed a number, and Belle watched him with a frown as he said “Do it” into the phone. When he hung up again, the frown on her face deepened.

“What was that? What did you just do?” There was a shrill tone in her voice, and he smiled.

“I did you a favor.”

“Reuben.”

He loosened the knot of his tie a little more and hooked a finger in the collar of his shirt to let air on his skin. “Well, it’s kind of…spot the difference. You have a twin sister that resembles you extraordinarily…” He paused when she flung a handful of soil at his chest.

“You did what?” Heat rose from her chest upwards, coloring her throat and her cheeks in a shade of angry red that he had only ever seen on her when they had been rolling between the sheets and she begged him to let her come. He swallowed.

“Belle, that’s Dolce & Gabbana…”

She flung another fistful of dirt at him. “Have you completely lost your mind?” The next handful of dirt hit his cheek and trickled down his neck, finding its way beneath his shirt. He took a step back, but she followed him, grabbing another handful of soil.

“Belle…”

“Oh, no, Mister, stop Belle-ing me. You did not just send my sister to my fiancé to find out if he can spot the difference!”

“I didn’t…” He backed away even further, because he knew that she’d kill him as soon as she found out what exactly he had just done.

“But that’s what you just said!”

“Well, technically, I sent her to your fiancé to break up with him.”

“But she isn’t…” It took a moment for the meaning of his words to sink in, but then she let out something between a lion’s roar and a war cry and flung herself at him, aiming with her fists at his chest. He stumbled backwards when she hit him with her momentum fueled by rage, and his back collided with one of the shelves. A few orchids toppled to the ground, showering him with even more of the loose soil. He winced when he accidently stepped on one of the plants and broke the delicate stem with pink blossoms with a crunching sound. Belle was tiny, but in her anger, she resembled a scary pixie, ready to tear off his head.

“How dare you!” she yelled, and he tried to wrap his arms around the flouncing bundle of rage, only to get another faceful of dirt.

“Belle, you told me yourself that you aren’t happy just a few moments ago!”

“And I told you that that’s not a reason to cast away a perfectly fine relationship!”

“Well, if your fiancé meets Lacey and recognizes her instantly as not you, then you have nothing to worry about, right?”

She grabbed him by his suit jacket and rammed him against the shelf in his back, causing them both to get showered with orchids. One of the plastic pots hit his skull rather painfully, and he groaned.

“And what if not, Mister I-know-what’s-best-for-you?” She was so close that he felt her breath hot on his throat, felt the heat of her body pressed against him, and he realized, mortified, that her closeness – and her rage, God help him – made him hard.

“Well…You can still explain it all to him, then.”

“Oh, no, I’m not going to explain anything. That will be your job.”

“Alright, alright.” He grasped her shoulders and pushed her gently away, and he let only go of her when he was sure she wouldn’t lunge at him again. Although he liked that she didn’t fear to touch him, didn’t hesitate to express her feelings physically, he felt that it was safer when she was at least a foot away from him. Because he wasn’t sure if he could hold back his own feelings. His craving for her touch. He missed to be touched. He missed _her_.

“You ruined my suit”, he said, brushing off dirt from his jacket and shirt. Belle narrowed her eyes at him, and bent down to grab some of the soil from the pots that had fallen to the ground.

“You mean like that?” she asked, straightening and rubbing the soil in her hand to his chest, smearing it over his shirt and his vest.

“Belle…”

“What on earth were you just thinking?”

 “You could have just told me that you’re happy, and I would have gone. Instead you told me that you’re not, and that you can’t stop thinking about me.”

“Yes, but it’s still my life. And no one decides my life but me. No one.”

“I’m sorry. Shall I call her off?”

Belle met his eyes, stared him down, and although she was so much smaller, he felt the need to duck under her glare.

“No. Don’t. It’s only fair that she breaks up something for me for a change. Just tell me one thing.”

“Anything.” Maybe that was a bit rushed, but he really would tell her, and give her, anything.

“What exactly do you want of me?”

He cleared his throat and shrugged in his suit, itching all over. He wanted to rip his clothes off and bare himself down to his soul before her, but at the same time he was afraid to grant her even a little glimpse at what he was hiding beneath all those layers of deception.

“I want you at my side. I want to come home from work and find you reading to Bae. I want you to touch me and I want to see you look at me without fear.” His voice was hoarse, breathless. “I want to make you happy.”

“You don’t even know me. Every minute I spent with you, I spent with you as Lacey. That’s not who I am.”

“I know.” He dared to step closer again, dared to lift his hand and cup her cheek. “I know. But it’s not entirely true. Every time I held you in my arms and kissed you, I held _you_. I kissed _you_. Not Lacey. You weren’t Lacey in my arms, you were yourself.”

She closed her eyes and tilted her head, meeting his touch. “I wish I could believe you. I really do.”

Her words were an echo of those that he had said to her once, and they hit him right below his ribs with a pang of guilt. He inhaled, and gathered all his courage before he grasped her shoulder and pulled her closer.

“Look at me”, he rasped, and when she opened her eyes to meet his gaze, he bent down, slowly, hardly breathing, and placed his lips on hers. She didn’t pull back. It was almost like their first kiss, soft, tentative, more a question than a kiss. When he straightened again, leaving her lips, he felt a tremor running through her, felt her shiver under his grip. The next moment, she grabbed his jacket, pressed herself to him, and captured his lips in a kiss that was anything but gentle and soft.

It was all that he needed as an answer, and when he sucked her bottom lip between his, sucked and nibbled, she groaned, a sound that rippled over his skin and let goose bumps erupt along his spine. He wanted to feel her all over him, her skin, her breath, her heat, everything, wanted to be a part of her. He had missed her more than he would ever be able to tell her. She started to shove his jacket from his shoulders, started to pull at the buttons of his vest, and he was only too eager to help her. Another plant crunched under his feet when he stumbled backwards, and he wanted to apologize, wanted to tell her how sorry he was, but her lips didn’t leave his, not while she was finally pulling away his choking tie, nor when she started to rip open his shirt. She was just as hungry as he was, and nothing could have made him happier, nothing could have made him feel more complete. Her hands roamed his chest, his back, and he allowed himself to do the same, to open the knots that held her apron, to tear at the button that closed her shorts, to tug at her shirt. Allowed himself to splay out his fingers on her ribcage and feel it expand with each breath she took, allowed himself to stroke upwards and cover her breast with his palms, prickling with the sensation of her skin under his touch. Allowed himself to stroke upwards, over her collarbones and shoulders, over her neck, to cradle her face while he kissed her and pressed himself to her. She pulled him down to the terracotta tiles, pulled him between her legs and wrapped herself around him, and he honestly had no idea how they managed to scratch each other out of the remainders of their clothes. He eased himself inside her on a bed of dirt and broken orchids, never leaving her lips, suffocating them both, drowning in each other, and it took them only a few thrusts to find the stars in each other. She groaned into his mouth, and he sobbed into hers, holding her close to his chest, wrapping his arms around her to protect her from the hard and dirty floor.

“I love you”, he whispered into the crook of her neck, into her skin, rubbing his face against her, and she wrapped her arms around him in an embrace so tight as if she wanted to pull him under her skin and hold him there, between her bones, close to her beating heart.

“Yes”, she whispered, and he lifted his head to look at her. She played with his hair, damp from sweat and the humidity of the greenhouse, and he felt her rubbing dirt into his skin between his shoulder blades.

“Yes?” he asked, and she smiled.

“Yes, I think it’s possible for us to go back. And yes, now I am happy. Here, on the ground, in the dirt, with you in my arms, I am happy.”

Her smile knocked the breath out of his lungs, and he kissed her, kissed her until blackness started to gnaw at the edges of his vision and he had to pull back to breathe again. He plucked the blossom of a broken orchid out of her loosened hair and tickled her lips with it.

“We could stay here…”

“I’d like that. But I fear we have to dress before my father stumbles in on us. And you have a son to get back to. And I have to pick up the pieces of my break up with Jefferson.”

He tensed. “Will you not come back with me?”

She smiled again, and caressed his cheek, letting her fingertips wander over his jaw and rubbing her thumb over his bottom lip. “I will go with you.” She plucked the flower out of his grip and tickled his nose with it. “But I think there are quite a few shards to pick up. And I’m still mad at you.”

“I can live with that.” And he kissed her again, just to make sure that she was real.  

   


	14. A Library

It had been almost too easy to get the keys to Belle’s apartment. She just told her dad that she had forgotten her (meaning: Belle’s) set of keys, and he gave her the spare keys without so much as looking at her. Lacey was not sure if she was upset or relieved that her father didn’t recognize her. She almost stumbled over a stack of books when she entered the apartment, and she couldn’t hold back a snicker at the sight of all those books gathering dust in Belle’s tiny hallway. Reuben deserved a little shock when he’d realize that Belle had a serious book-hoarding problem.

“Belle?” A man’s voice greeted her out of the kitchen, and when Lacey found her way into the tiny room (the only one that held orchids instead of books), she found Jefferson sitting on a chair and reading a paper. Well, she found his bare feet and his gorgeous legs in a Jeans, but the rest of him was hidden behind that paper.

“Hi there”, she said, and he folded the paper to look at her. Lacey leant against the doorframe and let him have an eyeful, taking in her sister’s fiancé in return. She wondered how Belle could give up _that_ for someone like Reuben. But the next moment, shock and disgust flitted over his face, and she was sure that he’d recognized that she wasn’t Belle.

“God, Belle, what on earth are you wearing? Is the Circus in town? That’s the worst outfit ever!” He wrinkled his nose, and Lacey stared down her front and wondered if he was high. She liked her skin-tight dress, and its screaming pink color.

“Well, no. That’s my break-up outfit.” She straightened and raised her eyebrows.

“Why do you need a break-up outfit?”

“Because I’m breaking up with you, of course. There will be no wedding.”

Jefferson leapt to his feet and strode to her, and Lacey had difficulties not to flinch. She still had problems with too close contact, and Jefferson came really close. She expected him to yell at her, to shout, but he just towered over her for a moment, leaning towards her, and furrowed his brows. His nostrils flared, and then he leaned away from her.

“You’re Lacey. You’re Belle’s sister.”

“Crap.” It slipped out before she could hold it back, and he tilted his head and looked at her like a bird would look at a worm wriggling through the mud, ready to pick at it and eat it whole. “What gave it away?”

“Well, the dress, for one. And you smell differently. Not so much like dust and soil. Belle always smells a little yellowed, like old books. You smell nice.”

“Hey, you’re talking about my sister here.” She placed her palm on his chest and pushed him farther away, but she couldn’t help but appreciate the feeling of hard muscles beneath her palm.

“Yeah, my fiancée. Or is she?”

“No, that part was for real. Sorry, but she’s breaking up with you.”

“And she couldn’t be bothered to tell me that herself? I thought she has enough courage for something like that.”

Lacey snickered. “She is otherwise engaged, I think.”

Jefferson dragged himself back to his chair and slumped down, burying his face between his hands. Lacey felt sorry for him, because he really seemed to be a nice guy. A gorgeous looking guy.

“Well, it’s not really a surprise. Ever since I came back, she was just so…distant.” He lifted his head up and looked at her with big, gleaming eyes, and Lacey felt panic rush through her.

“Oh no, you’re not gonna cry, are you? I don’t have tissues or anything.”

“Maybe you…could hold me a little?”

Normally, Lacey wouldn’t have gone near him, but he looked just so miserable, with his big, sad eyes and his ruffled hair, so she stalked to his side, bent down and put her arms around his neck, a little awkwardly, because she didn’t really know him, and touching was something she didn’t do sober. She heard him snivel, and felt something damp on her naked shoulder ( _Please, don’t let it be tears_ , she thought), and then he grabbed her hips and pulled her down on his lap, wrapping his arms around her like a vice.

“Um…are you ok?” she asked, trying to wriggle away from him to get a little room between them – although it felt almost nice to be pressed against his hard chest – but he cupped her hips (more her ass, but she suspected that it was an accident) and pulled her closer again.

“No, I’m not ok. My heart is broken. I came here to marry, and now I have to leave and enjoy the pleasures of life all by myself. That is not fair. Of course I’m not ok.” While he talked to the crook of her neck, he brushed her hair away and massaged her back between her shoulder blades. It felt nice, even though she wasn’t drunk, and she relaxed a little, but in doing so, her balance on his thighs became unstable and she almost toppled to the ground. He saved her by wrapping his arms even tighter around her.

“Hm, I understand that you’re upset, but maybe you could let go of me again? I feel a little awkward…” She patted the back of his head, and felt his chest expand with a deep sigh.

“Good awkward or bad awkward?” he asked, and Lacey registered a little irritated how he rubbed his face against her collarbone and her shoulder. He really had to be high.

“Just awkward awkward.”

“Oh well. I thought I would at least get a little sex out of this.” He let his arms drop away from her, and that was good, because Lacey was short of ramming her heel down on his bare foot. She jumped off his lap and punched him in his (hard) chest.

“What the hell. I’m not having sex with you. You’re my sister’s fiancé.”

“Her ex-fiancé”, he said, smiling like a wolf and wriggling his eyebrows.

“For five minutes. I’m not giving you a sympathy shag!”

“Really?” He sighed again, and Lacey wondered if he was moved at all by the break up. She had expected a little more…drama. But then, when Reuben and she had decided to split up, there had not been drama, either. They had both known that it was for the best. And funnily enough, they got along much better since then. So good, that Lacey even decided to help him find his happiness. It had been her doing to nudge him into the right direction and drag him here, to Belle. She doubted that Reuben would have come here on his own. Ever.

“Did you love Belle at all?” she asked, and ignored the flutter in her stomach when Jefferson smiled at her.

“Of course I did. Who wouldn’t love Belle?”

“Yeah, who wouldn’t?” Lacey slumped down on the other chair at Belle’s kitchen table.

“But you smell nicer.” He put his hand over hers on the table and squeezed gently.

“Still no sympathy shag.”

“Give me half an hour to make you change your mind.” Jefferson wriggled his brows again, and a giggle burbled up inside her, tickling between her lungs and prickling on her tongue. She couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed like this. Honest.

“Ok. Half an hour.”

In the end, he needed only twenty minutes.

 

 

***

 

Finally the last boxes with her books had arrived, after almost six months, and Belle sorted them into the shelves that Reuben had had installed for her. He had been a little shocked when he entered her flat for the first time and was confronted with her innumerous books, and Belle still snickered with the memory of his face draining of color. Well, he had forgotten _that_ shock pretty quickly when they came into the bedroom and found Lacey and Jefferson there, sleeping like a pair of kittens, naked and entangled…Belle had been shocked, too, until Lacey woke up and made clear that Jefferson had not mistaken her for Belle. Obviously his mourning over the end of his engagement lasted not longer than twenty minutes.

The soft tapping of Reuben’s cane made her aware of him entering the room – Lacey’s former bedroom and now part of her “Library” – and she smiled without turning around to face him.

“Still sorting, darling?” he asked, coming up behind her and wrapping his free arm around her waist to pull her to his chest. She loved how natural this had become, how he touched her without hesitation and without doubting if she might welcome him or not. It was this that he had missed so much after everything with Lacey had turned sour. And she loved how he always looked a little like a kitten, wondering and incredulous, when she touched him. As if he still couldn’t believe that someone would want to feel him, would want to share a moment of skin on skin contact. He kissed her neck, now, and inhaled deeply, almost purring while doing so. Belle leaned against him and let him sway a little back and forth with her in his arms, and she remembered the moment in the shop, when he had held her almost like he did now. She heard how he propped his cane against a shelf, and then he stroked down her arm until he reached her hand and the book she was holding.

“Rilke. You still have my book.” He sounded hoarse, and Belle chuckled.

“Of course I do, silly. Of all the books I have, this is the one I truly cherish. Because I know how much it means to you, and I knew, when I unwrapped it, how much I must have meant to you when you were ready to part with it and send it to me.”

“I wanted you to remember me. I wanted you to know that I knew, and that I understood that you didn’t lie to me to hurt me…” His voice almost broke, and he pressed another kiss to the crook of her neck.

“Oh Reuben…” She turned in his arms to hug him, and when she pressed herself against him, he let out a surprised gasp.

“Did you feel that?” he asked, pulling a little away and placing his hand on her belly.

“Of course I did. The twins are quite agile today.” She smiled and lifted herself up on her tiptoes to kiss him, but he was captured by the movements in her belly beneath his palm, and his kiss got a little sloppy. But the wonder and joy on his face made up for that.

 

END


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